Groundhog Day: When Every Day Feels Meaningless and the Same...

Groundhog Day has been called one of the most spiritual movies of all time and was a particular favorite of film critic Roger Ebert, who loved it so much that he reviewed it twice. (See his original review here.) Personally, I’ve seen this movie probably a hundred times, and it never gets old. It teaches the most important lesson—easy to know, but so hard to live out. Groundhog Day also asks the most important questions: what is important in this life? What should we do with the time that is given to us? What is the key to fulfillment?

Weatherman Phil Collins gets stuck in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania reliving February 2nd when he goes there to do a news story about Groundhog Day—a story that is not good enough for him. Phil is pompous and arrogant, and we are supposed to dislike him. He is in the wrong, he needs to change, but I find it so interesting that Phil is not outrightly evil. He doesn’t go out of his way to do bad things to others (not at first, anyway), but I think that the movie shows perfectly well how self-absorption can be a kind of evil. It blinds Phil to the well-meaning gestures of coworkers and townspeople and leaves him perpetually striving for more—to be a bigger, better news anchor, to move on from tiny nobody towns like Punxsutawney, to have fame and power.

When Phil gets stuck reliving the same day over and over again, he first tries to escape his existence (this time loop) through leaving town, through telling people about his problem, even going so far as to see a doctor. Why are we here? Why is this happening? Why do we exist and live out these increasingly monotonous days (and largely, lives) where nothing seems to matter? These are the questions that Phil tries to answer until the futility of ever answering them or escaping his predicament becomes clear. It is then that Phil turns to pleasure—exploring the thought that if we’re here on Earth for some time for God knows what reason, why not enjoy ourselves? He spends a night getting drunk with some guys who missed their bus out of town, resulting in a car chase, the death of at least one police officer (by tricking him into getting run over by a train), and an injurious crash.** Phil ends up in jail that night but wakes up the next morning back in his room at the cozy B&B that Rita, his producer, booked for him, and no one is any the wiser to his previous exploits. He realizes that there are no consequences to his actions—basically, nothing that he does matters. So Phil eats with abandon, beds an old high school crush with no intention of ever seeing her again, and attempts to seduce Rita, who is kind and generous and rightly rebuffs him at every turn. Due to Phil’s predicament, money is not a problem—he can have as much as he wants through stealing or guessing at the stock prices or what have you, but money and possessions are meaningless. Phil even tries his hand at intelligence to gather meaning from existence. He already was trying that in essence by being the know-it-all arrogant person he was at the beginning of the movie, but this idea is also taken up through one small scene at the B&B where Phil answers every Jeopardy question correctly, to the amazement of all present. However, neither knowledge nor pleasure nor intellect bring Phil anything close to joy or fulfillment.

In some ways, Phil’s trajectory follows the five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Phil moved through the initial stages of denial and anger pretty quickly as he tried to fix his predicament, and then he moved through bargaining as he took every pleasure and resource available to him in the town (as if to say, if I’m going to be stuck here forever, I can at least have all of this, right?). Then, Phil moves on to depression, feeling the utter crushing helplessness and futility of existence. If every day is the same and nothing matters, then what is the point? Perhaps there is not one, which prompts Phil to kill himself in increasingly terrible ways. His most iconic suicide attempt has him becoming a terrorist of sorts—kidnapping the groundhog, Punxsutawney Phil, as if he is to blame for all of this, stealing a truck, and driving into a deep pit at a construction site whereupon the truck explodes, all filmed by his cameraman Larry and witnessed by Rita and other town officials.

After living countless days in this time loop—estimates range from 10 years to 10,000 years—Phil gradually comes to an acceptance of the most profound truth: the way that we find meaning in life is by doing things for other people. By experiencing things with other people. By investing in our communities and investing in ourselves. By doing kind things for people over and over again, even if they don’t appreciate it. Phil does all of these things by performing acts of kindness large and small—from saving a choking man to fixing some elderly ladies’ flat tire to catching a kid falling from a tree (who never thanks him, by the way). He doesn’t do it for credit—by this point, he has accepted the reality of the futility of his existence and discovered that this is the best and only way to live. He learns to play the piano and performs for a Groundhog Day concert. It is when he stops trying to woo Rita that she finally comes to him—betting on him for a charity auction after realizing all of the wonderful things he has done for everyone in the town. Phil has become her version of a perfect man, which she described to him during a diner lunch on one of these many Groundhog Days. While some argue that Phil does all that he does in order to win over Rita, which is manipulative and unfair to her, as she has only known Phil up until Groundhog Day as an egotistical asshole who could just be acting good on this one day—we know the truth. We have seen Phil change, and yes, as was the custom with many old movies (and many movies today), the main character’s change for the better is rewarded by him ‘getting the girl.’ I maintain that Phil does not try to woo Rita on his ultimate Groundhog Day—even going so far as to refuse coffee with her because he has things to do around town. Phil certainly tried to manipulate Rita earlier in his journey through memorizing her likes and dislikes and doing things for her to lure her to bed, which she called him out on. But Rita, of her own free will, chooses Phil at the end of the movie because he has become a person worth being around—a person who cares about other people, who is humble and industrious, giving and kind. I have to quote Ebert here because his writing is just so good:

There is a moment when Phil tells Rita, "When you stand in the snow, you look like an

angel." The point is not that he has come to love Rita. It is that he has learned to see

the angel.

Exactly! The point of life is noticing these small, beautiful moments. The point is to appreciate the small things. To appreciate the other people around us. This act of noticing, of appreciation is done through kind words, selfless gestures, by being a person filled with life and joy.

Groundhog Day is a microcosm for life—monotonous, seemingly pointless, every day filled with annoyances and good and bad—just as the small town life and the man Rita imagines as her perfect guy are a microcosm for a version of the American Dream. What do people really want, deep down? They want to be appreciated, they want to be loved, but more than anything, they need to contribute something good to the world, whether that effort is appreciated or not. They need to be good, to do good works for others. This is the essence of the film’s spirituality, I think.

You can probably tell I’m a big fan of this movie by how I’ve gone on and on about it, but really—it is something special. I’m only talking about it in a cerebral fashion here, but the film is brilliantly put together and wonderfully acted to boot. Bill Murray remains one of my favorite actors—a legend, due in large part to his performance in this movie. He embodies Phil, and we can all see ourselves in him to some extent. We all wonder what this life is all about. The answer? We don’t know, and we can try figuring it out. We can deny that our existence is futile, that it is temporary and beautiful and ephemeral. We can become angry at so many things—at the not knowing, at the evils of the world, at the lack of appreciation and understanding. We can try to bargain with life, and we can ‘what if’ ourselves to no end. We can become depressed and try to end it all. Or we can accept the fundamental truth that the movie teaches us: be kind. Be of service to others. Invest in yourself and those around you. Find joy in the ephemeral. Be part of a community. Appreciate the stupid little things like a “Groundhog Day” celebration—something that Phil detests and belittles at the beginning of the film but grows to love and appreciate.

In his original Groundhog Day review, Ebert likens the movie to It’s a Wonderful Life, a comparison which I love. It’s a Wonderful Life is also about all of the important things: how altruism is a good way to live, how being a good and giving person is better, how acceptance of choices and reality is key to appreciating and enjoying the little things. You may not have everything you want, but if you’re investing in relationships with people, you’re a very wealthy person indeed. Again, I’ll quote Ebert (in his original Groundhog Day review): “Just because we're born as SOBs doesn't mean we have to live that way.” True that. Why not be better? Why not be good?

This lesson remains more important now than ever after a year spent in quarantine where every day feels a little like the day before it. Let us not forget what is important—human connection and kindness. Let us find ways to be together as much as we can. As I said before, the lesson of Groundhog Day is not difficult to pinpoint—it is difficult to live out. It’s so much easier to become wrapped up in ourselves, to be like Phil at the beginning, chasing after ambition and pleasure and acclaim as if those things will bring us fulfillment. But true fulfillment lies in abdicating the need to make one’s mark on the world in some big way—like Phil moving on to a better news station and becoming a big time reporter. Instead, he made his mark on the world in small ways—by making small talk with people, by giving a homeless man a warm meal, by helping others in ways big and small. Many of these ‘small’ things end up being not so small after all. Groundhog Day teaches us the paradox of our existence—that it is both futile and not futile. It gives us a playbook for how we should attach meaning to life. I, for one, will continue to watch and appreciate this timeless movie for decades to come.

**Phil’s harming of others, which also doesn’t seem to matter in a world with no tomorrow, is a point taken up in a modern Groundhog Day remake, if you will—Palm Springs. In this movie, Nyles yells at Sarah at one point that while nothing they do matters, “Pain matters! What we do to other people matters!” His philosophy is to take whatever pleasures one wants in this pointless existence but do no harm. A very interesting take on the same lesson of Groundhog Day—by the end of Palm Springs, Nyles’ view has been modified too (beyond being a passive participant in life to actively choosing to do something), and he decides that he would rather risk it all and be with Sarah than do anything else.