I am a big fan of The Kinks song, Do You Remember Walter?. I have always found the song lyrics somehow moving and troubling. The movie might as well be an adaptation of that song, except it is told from Walter’s perspective:

“Walter, remember when the world was young
And all the girls knew Walter’s name?
Walter, isn’t it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, playing cricket in the thunder and the rain?
Do you remember, Walter, smoking cigarettes behind your garden gate?
Yes, Walter was my mate,
But Walter, my old friend, where are you now?

Walter’s name.
Walter, isn’t it a shame the way our little world has changed?
Do you remember, Walter, how we said we’d fight the world so we’d be free.
We’d save up all our money and we’d buy a boat and sail away to sea.
But it was not to be.
I knew you then but do I know you now?

Walter, you are just an echo of a world I knew so long ago
If you saw me now you wouldn’t even know my name.
I bet you’re fat and married and you’re always home in bed by half-past eight.
And if I talked about the old times you’d get bored and you’ll have nothing more to say.
Yes people often change, but memories of people can remain.”

The Walter from the song is Chris (Christian Bale), a middle-aged man with a steady job, a wife, a baby, and a mortgage. His childhood and best friend Toni (Lee Ross) shows up after five years and stirs something in him. Toni wanders the globe, fucks around and parties, and has not changed since the days when both of them were young and wanted to set the world on fire. Back on those days (the 60s), they mocked the bourgeois and wanted to be free forever. Toni was an aspiring writer and Chris was an aspiring photographer, but while Toni continues to be one, Chris has moved towards a conformist life:

“Uh… I make lists. Chris Lloyd…the story so far
Healthy, not poor.
Not… deformed.
Not… starving.
Married: Yes.
Children: One.
Job: One.
House: Yes.
Mortgage: Yes.
Car…Arguably.
So on, so on. Till the panic subsides.”

“What have you got to panic about?”

“Nothing. That’s what worries me.”

It is easy to sympathize with Chris and even easier to want to live Toni’s life, but the movie is brilliantly able to show us the difficult decisions that people like Chris face. It would easy to show it by amplifying certain events to show which life is better or worse to make a case for the movie’s intentions, but the movie does not do that. Chris faces the same issues a lot of us do. Why do a lot of us let go of our dreams? In one scene, Chris is tempted to cheat on his wife but pulls back. The woman says that he didn’t do it because he was scared. He retorts angrily, “Possibly, yes! Isn’t that as good a reason as any?” And isn’t it? The conformist, stable life is easy and comforting, and it is scary to change it, but so what? Isn’t that a good enough reason not to change your life? If that sort of life didn’t work, it wouldn’t be so prevalent across generations through all these centuries.

“I’ll never get married.”

“Oh, I think you will.”

“Why?”

“You’re not original enough not to.”