Groundhog Day (film)
Groundhog Day is a
1993 comedy film and
box office hit starring
Bill Murray as Phil Connors, an egocentric
Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania TV weatherman who, dreading his hated annual assignment covering
Groundhog Day (February 2) in
Punxsutawney, finds himself repeating the day over and over.
Andie MacDowell plays Rita, his new producer, and
Chris Elliott plays Larry, a station camera operator. The film was directed by
Harold Ramis and written by Ramis and Danny Rubin.
The film became so famous that often when in another work of fiction a character is caught in a
time loop (repeating a day or other set amount of time over and over), the character is said to be "living his/her own
Groundhog Day."
In
Total Film's 90's special issue, Groundhog Day was deemed the best film of 1993.
Phil Connors and his crew from the fictional Pittsburgh television station WPBH-TV travel to
Punxsutawney (which, in real life, as in the movie, holds a major celebration for
Groundhog Day) to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities with
Punxsutawney Phil.
After the celebration concludes, a
blizzard develops, closing the nearby roads and shutting down outside phone service, forcing Phil and company to spend an extra day in Punxsutawney. Phil, however, does not wake up on
February 3, but rather on
February 2 again. He finds himself trapped in a seemingly endless "
time loop", living the same day in the same small town over and over. Groundhog Day begins afresh for Connors each morning (starting with his waking up to the same song,
Sonny & Cher's I Got You Babe, on his
alarm clock radio), but with his (and only his) memories of previous instances of the day intact.
He soon takes advantage of his foreknowledge of the day's events, the information he is able to gather about the town's inhabitants, and the fact that his actions can have no long-term consequences. He creates an extravagant life for himself, robbing banks, seducing women, and indulging his every pleasure. However, his attempts to seduce Rita are met with repeated failure. He begins to tire, and then to despair of his existence. He commits
suicide several times, but even death cannot stop the day from repeating. In one attempt he kills the groundhog along with himself, but even this will not stop the loop. He opens his heart to Rita, and her advice helps him to gradually find a goal for his trapped life: as a benefactor to others. He cannot, in a single day, bring others to fulfill his needs but he can achieve self-improvement by educating himself on a daily basis.
Phil goes on to develop many talents such as
ice sculpting and playing the
piano. He also enhances his own human understanding which, in return, makes him an appreciated and loved man, which eventually allows him to ultimately find love and wake up on
February 3.
The film explores
existentialist themes (cf. Camus's essay
The Myth of Sisyphus), showing how one's own choices influence and dictate one's future; in this respect, it parallels the life of George Bailey in Capra's
It's a Wonderful Life. In contrast to Bailey, Connors gets to manipulate the variables, and then to see the many different outcomes, which seem to repeat countless times.
The concept of the
Eternal return, especially that posited by
Friedrich Nietzsche, has also been cited as a philosophical inspiration for the film, though Connors' eventual redemption seemingly runs contrary to Nietzsche's outlook, where a goal of eternal recurrence is to make the best of what one has. However, Connors does learn essentially this lesson, so it is not entirely contradictory to Nietzsche.
Though the film does not specify the number of repetitions, there is enough time for Connors to learn to play jazz piano, speak
French, sculpt ice, and to learn the life story of many people in the town, not to mention mastering the art of flipping playing cards into an upturned hat, which he offhandedly suggests takes six months. Director Harold Ramis states that the day repeats for about ten years. Though the original script had February 2 repeating for thousands of years, the film depicts thirty-three definite repeats.
|
Phil Connors committing one of his many suicides - "I have been stabbed, shot, poisoned, frozen, hung, electrocuted and burned." |
After realizing the day is repeating, Connors explores
hedonism and
debauchery. Though he first finds enormous pleasure in living a consequence-free existence, he soon passes into desperation and depression, and finally kidnaps
Punxsutawney Phil in a bid to kill them both and end the cycle. His attempt is unsuccessful—his own death simply cuts the day short and repeats the process—but he attempts
suicide many more times before succumbing to the sad realization that he is
immortal, at least in the context of Groundhog Day.
Out of sheer boredom, Connors eventually begins to get to know the town he had previously dismissed as the inconsequential site of an irritating once-a-year broadcast. In the end, he helps the ill, rescues people, takes piano lessons, becomes an expert
ice sculptor, and eventually learns to appreciate others. These experiences, and their consequences, allow Phil to like himself, to like others, and to be liked. As he becomes concerned with the lives of others, he is able to love, and is eventually able to win Rita's heart without trying to win it. In other words, he's a great guy; not because he says so, but because that is how others see him. With this, Connors finally awakens to a
new day and a new life.
Appropriate to his newfound appreciation for life, Connors' penultimate line of the movie, upon realizing that the curse is broken, is "Let's live here!" Even given a choice to escape the town he's been trapped in, he has found internal satisfaction and no longer feels a need to go anywhere else. On the other hand, since the last line is "We'll rent at first," perhaps he can take his new found understanding of life anywhere he and Rita go.
Groundhog Day is a tale of self improvement, to look inside oneself and realize that the only satisfaction in life comes from turning outward and concerning yourself with others rather than concentrating solely on one's own wants and desires. Although it did not do exceptionally well in its original cinema release, the movie had a sort of second life on video and cable. Originally noted as an uplifting
romantic comedy by critics, it has since entrenched itself as one of the great American films of the late 20th Century: The film is number thirty-four on the
American Film Institute's list of
100 Funniest Movies, and
Roger Ebert has revisited it in his "Great Movies" series. In
2000, readers of
Total Film magazine voted it the 7th greatest comedy film of all time. It is also currently number 182 of the Top 250 Movies of all time, as rated by members of the
Internet Movie Database, with an 8.0 rating out of 10.
The phrase "Groundhog Day" has entered common use as a reference to an unpleasant situation that continually repeats, or seems to. In the UK, the phrase is almost always used in this sense, since groundhogs are not native there and the American six-more-weeks-of-winter Groundhog Day tradition does not exist.
The film's mild
cult following has made it one of Murray's well-known roles; this is acknowledged by the actor in a recorded holiday greeting played on
Air America Radio, in which the actor wishes the listener a "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy New Year, and Happy Groundhog Day."
There are several differences between the original script for
Groundhog Day, as written by Danny Rubin, and the film as it was actually released, due to changes made by the film's director Harold Ramis. In the original script the film began in the middle of the narrative, without explaining how Phil Connors had come to be constantly reliving Groundhog Day. However the filmmakers became concerned that the audience would feel cheated without seeing Phil's growing realization of the nature of the time loop. Rubin had also originally envisioned Andie MacDowell's Rita reliving Groundhog Day with Phil and wished to portray the pair as being stuck in the time loop for far longer than in the final film, possibly for thousands of years. Consequently, the love story within the film was less developed in the original script than in the final movie.
There was also a second draft script, which gave an explicit reason for the time loopthat did not appear in the final film.
The location for most of the shooting of the film was not actually Punxsutawney but rather
Woodstock, Illinois, which "just seemed right." The inhabitants of Woodstock helped in the film's production by bringing out heaters to warm the cast and crew in cold weather. Needless to say, some facts of the real-life celebration had to be adjusted. For example, in Punxsutawney, the actual Groundhog Day celebration location, Gobbler's Knob, is located in a rural area about 2 miles east of town. In this film, however, the viewer is led to believe that the location is within the town's boundaries.
Some of the film was also shot in nearby
Indiana, Pennsylvania.
*
British Comedy Awards 1993 (Comedy Film)
*
Saturn Award for Best Actress (Film) (Andie McDowell, for playing Rita)
*
The Dismemberment Plan was a
Washington D.C. based
dance-punk band which derived its name from a stray phrase uttered by the insurance salesman in the movie, Ned Ryerson (played by character actor
Stephen Tobolowsky).
*
Groundhog Day apparently inspired time loops in episodes of
Xena: Warrior Princess ("Been There, Done That"),
Buffy the Vampire Slayer ("Life Serial" Act III),
Seven Days, "
The X-Files" ("Monday"), and
Stargate SG-1 ("
Window of Opportunity").
*Movie Reviews
*Transparency Now on Groundhog Day
*Annotated links of Groundhog Day and Buddhism
*National Review's Jonah Goldberg's Cover Story on Groundhog Day
*Co-screen-writer, Danny Rubin's Homepage
* Real-life "Groundhog Days" studied
