The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Ben Stiller’s film took nearly twenty years to reach a screen. Samuel Goldwyn Jr. set it going in 1994 with Jim Carrey in mind, and over the following years Ron Howard, Chuck Russell, Steven Spielberg, Mark Waters and Gore Verbinski were each named as director, while Owen Wilson, Mike Myers and Sacha Baron Cohen were each attached to star. Goldwyn sued to get the rights back and won. Stiller took the part in 2011 and the director’s chair the year after. The recording format is a deliberate choice. Cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh worked on Kodak negative with Arricam SP and LT bodies and Hawk V-Lite lenses. His reasoning was plain: the lead loves photography and works with photographs, so the script was written to be shot on film. The office world is drained to cool greys while the daydreams and the journey open out through filtration, saturation and contrast. Every remote destination was captured in one country. Greenland, the Himalayas and Afghanistan were all shot in Iceland. A good fit if you want to know which life Walter is in from the colour rather than the dialogue, held consistently across one hundred and fourteen minutes. Not for you if you will read the place names on screen as geography, since they are all the same island.