GROUNDHOG DAY - A Reflection

Is this the most poignant scene in cinematic history?
Yes. Of course it is.

Rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐

Spoiler warning, I guess. I mean, it's turning 30 next week, so... You've had time.

There are movies you're always in the mood to watch. You know all the lines, the music cues, what the next scene will be, and the scene after that. There's comfort in the recitation, tranquility in the omniscience, relief in the option to engage or zone out. For me, these films include A League of Their Own, Jaws, Raising Arizona, and - God help me - National Treasure. Good or bad, they're yours and you love them.

And then there are the movies that burrow deep into your soul, inextricably tangling themselves in the fabric of your being. A cinematic soulmate that won't b.s. you. I have one of those too, and that movie is Groundhog Day. Like the comfort watches listed above, I quote along, clock the landmarks (Fake John Candy, absurd red hat, etc.) that shift into focus after a couple dozen watches - and yet the movie is more mentor than friend. The familiarity is overshadowed by its "what if" thought experiment and how the answers to the question of what you would do if you were living the same day over and over evolve from viewing to viewing, even if it's only been a month or two. It's a movie that meets you where you are, every time, and the results can be borderline epiphanic. It's a beautiful thing.

Groundhog Day has been a mainstay in my life since it started airing on cable when I was seven or eight. It's the kind of movie that isn't geared towards children, but offers enough to keep their attention - car chases, an immortal main character, big ol' rodents... There's no way I understood the complexities of what I was watching, but the guy from Ghostbusters was there and he was always up to something. Whenever it cropped up on TV I dropped everything. As I aged, and my understanding of storytelling and self increased, it was like the film grew with me. And so it stayed in rotation through high school, and then through college, and then into other chapters of my life. When I was teaching Conversational English oversees it became a go-to; the repetition of language and hypothetical situations being tools that served both the class and the movie. I watched it on my first date with Laura, and it remains the movie we've seen the most times together. (Distant second would be Silver Linings Playbook, but that's not important right now. We'll circle back on its 30th anniversary.) If Brett Goldstein ever asks, it will be my film to be buried with.

Every aspect of Groundhog Day works for me. From a story standpoint, it's simple enough. Phil Connors (Bill Murray), a jaded weatherman from Pittsburg, heads to Punxsutawney to cover the titular holiday's proceedings, and after being thwarted by a blizzard finds himself stuck in the town another night. Upon waking, he finds himself reliving February 2. The rest of the town, as well as his producer Rita (Andie MacDowell, the most charming actress who ever lived) and cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot, the Cabin Boy himself), seem oblivious to the supernatural event and he does his best to convince himself it was deja vu. When he wakes up a third time to the same day, he starts panicking - and the audience settles in. Phil will remain in this loop until the end of the film.

There's no reason given for why this is happening to Phil, either at the start or end of the film. Screenwriter Danny Rubin and director Harold Ramis, who became a co-screenwriter during the making of the film, disagreed over its tone and structure, but both seemed intent on keeping explanation out of the script. They each understood this should be a spiritual journey. And that's the film's greatest asset. Phil is adrift in this circumstance, an existential guinea pig in a case study of one. How long does the experiment last? We don't know that either. Estimations range from eight years to 1,000 years (though Ramis, when pressured, speculated 30-40). What matters is it's a long, long time, and it's all spent in Punxsutawney.

Phil hates Punxsutawney, so his path follows Kubler-Ross's Five Stages of Grief. Not necessarily in order, as he skips to acceptance briefly after realizing his actions have no consequences. He seduces women, does some light heisting, pigs out, drives recklessly - you know, what you would expect a shallow, self-loathing dude to do in this kind of situation. In true 90s comedy fashion, we're meant to kind of root for him. But maybe only part of the time? I don't know. I'm choosing to believe this is a feature of the story's hands-off approach to morality. And Murray is custom built for this sort of sleezy charmer, so entertainment is inevitable. Either way, he's back on track after a series of rejections from Rita, who has more than enough wits about her to realize something is off about Phil. You can fake interest, but you can't fake connection. It will take Phil ages to stop making everything about himself and learn to connect. He leapfrogs and doubles back on the Five Stages as he works his way from denial to acceptance.

"Bing!"

Along the way, you do start to feel for Phil. Whether you initially despise him or revel in his debauchery, you're on the same path to empathy. Many of his encounters are played purely for laughs, as with local insurance salesman - and unconfirmed Energy Vampire - Ned Ryerson ("'Needle-Nose Ned.' 'Ned the Head.' Come on, buddy, Case Western High!"), played by the indelible Stephen Tobolowsky, who should have won an Oscar for how he weaponizes the word "bing." Ned is a sympathy gateway drug. He's intrusive and clingy and we relate to Phil's urge to run away. He helps Phil work through the Anger stage. The film is lousy with incredible supporting characters who Phil loathes initially but will eventually depend on to get him through this purgatory, and the rest of the Five Stages. Angela Paton's Mrs. Lancaster and Ken Hudson Campbell's unnamed Man in Hallway are sort of litmus tests for Phil's temperament as the day starts. After them we have Tobolowsky's Ned (Anger), Rick Ducommun's Gus and Rick Overton's Ralph (Depression), Les Podewell as the Old Man that Phil can't save (Bargaining). And Denial is... uh... Phil's weather prediction about the blizzard, I guess. Again, it's a loose implementation of Kubler-Ross's work. But the heart and conscience of the film is Rita, who helps steer Phil towards true Acceptance.

The most impactful scene in the movie is actually two scenes. Phil and Rita share a genuine moment when some local kids start a snowball fight with them while they're building a snowman. The day ends well for Phil, so it's extra crushing when the day resets. You can't recapture that kind of thing, and the next time this scene plays out he overdoes it, desperate to recreate spontaneity. He's at the end of a day he has been crafting for... months, maybe years? And while each of these nice moments he's lined up may have felt real in the moment, each subsequent iteration is a manufactured echo that reverberates dishonesty. Phil is in the cusp of a breakthrough, but he's not ready for it emotionally, so it turns into a breakdown. He spirals. He gets slapped a lot. And things get dark fast. No time travel film has ever been so gutting, though many have tried. Richard Curtis' lovely About Time got very close, but also insisted on explaining its world's rules and suffered as a result. Only once Phil has dispatched himself enough times to really start questioning his own existence (the irony being that he can't not exist) does he reach enlightenment, at which point his small heart grows three sizes and he rides his sleigh back down Mt. Crumpit to embrace his neighbors' merriment and become not just a functioning member of society, but a happy person who is capable of love and is ready to ascend... You know, like the Grinch, who was trapped in a holiday loop for 53 years. Literally, day after day, Christmas after Christmas after Christmas... That's what was happening, right?

"And he, he himself, the Grinch carved the roast beast."

I've gotten off track. So let's talk about the sci-fi aspects of this thing. Time loops weren't new in 1993, but they were rare. Later we would get Run Lola Run, Edge of Tomorrow, Happy Death Day and Palm Springs, each owing to - and forever mentioned in the same breath as - Groundhog Day. The Netflix series Russian Doll is probably the best contemporary example. But before all those were a handful of movies I've never seen, most of which dealt with going back in time for the sake of a do-over, like 1933's Turn Back the Clock or 1947's Repeat Performance. Eventually movies about same-day looping cropped up. The brilliant French director Claire Denis made a student film, called Le 15 Mai, featuring the plot device in 1969. (It's, as expected, pretty good.) There was the anime feature Urusei Yatsura 2, and then a couple adaptations of Richard A. Lupoff's short story "12:01 P.M." Lupoff would attempt to take legal action against Columbia Pictures, accusing Groundhog Day of plagiarism, but his lawyers eventually convinced him to drop the case.

Though if there's anyone's work Rubin was borrowing from, it was playwright David Ives, whose one-act plays like "Sure Thing" and "Variations on the Death of Trotsky," produced in the late 80s and early 90s, dealt with looped time on stage. In "Sure Thing" a call bell is used by its two characters to reset moments in real time, allowing each to make (or force) different choices. Groundhog Day uses film editing the same way, particularly in a segment where Phil spends days attempting to craft responses to woo Rita at the hotel bar. In another Ives play, "Words, Words, Words," a trio of chimps are set infront of three typewriters in an experiment designed to prove the hypothesis that with enough time, the monkeys will type out Hamlet. The premise of the film is operating the same way: with enough time, Phil will become a happy, selfless person. If you're at all familiar with Ives' work - and if you're not, check out All in the Timing, the collection these plays are found in - the parroting is irrefutable.

"Words, Words, Words"

I'm not saying Groundhog Day is in the wrong for following such a formula. Rather it is building off of a fascinating and versatile trope, and in turn further popularizing it and leading to an increasing number of imitators. That's... how art works. That's how humanity works. Groundhog Day is Ives and Seuss and Buddhism and nihilism and Ramis and Rubin and Murray and MacDowell and studio notes and you and me and the works that it inspired. We're going to keep going through these same cycles, but it's how we choose to use our individual loops that matters.

I didn't set out to write a thesis on Groundhog Day. I was aiming for a 500-word review akin to my other Friday posts. But this film is in my bones. It's been kicking around in my subconscious for nearly three decades, a 90-minute mantra that has driven me a little nuts but also made me a better, more empathetic person. I could watch it every day and discover something new each time. It's flawed, yes. But so am I. Groundhog Day is the kind of movie that leans into the flaws, that acknowledges we're all a work in progress. Phil's journey isn't over at the end of the film. He's learned a lot, but he's also been institutionalized. He'll have so much to grapple with the first time he meets a new person or experiences the seasons change or sees a new episode of Jeopardy. The work isn't finished - for Phil or for us. We're never done. And that's wonderful.

P.S. Danny Rubin get at me; I have so many ideas for a sequel.