The Philosophy of the Groundhog...

           What gives life meaning? What makes an individual life meaningful? What is the Good life? How should we treat others? Do we have any control over our own lives or is everything predetermined? What part does time play in all of this? What if there was no tomorrow? All of these are questions which are addressed in some form by director Harold Ramis’ 1993 comedy Groundhog Day.

6:00 am on February 2 comes early and often for weatherman Phil Connors. Sent to Punxsutawney Pennsylvania to report for the 4^th year in a row on what is the country’s oldest Groundhog Day celebration, cynical and snide Phil, played by Bill Murray is surly and unpleasant towards his cameraman, Larry (Chris Elliot),  producer, Rita (Andie MacDowell) and pretty much everyone he comes in contact with. He is constantly acerbic and insincere in his weather reporting as well as his social interactions. Phil is a man who doesn’t like people, telling Rita and Larry on their drive to Punxsutawney, that “People are morons.” After reporting half-heartedly on the Groundhog Day ceremony Phil is desperate to get back to Pittsburg immediately but Mother Nature has other plans. They get caught in an oncoming blizzard that Phil ironically predicted would miss the area altogether and are forced back to Punxsutawney. It is the next morning when Phil wakes up to the same song playing on the radio, I Got You Babe, that he senses something is not quite right. With a sense of déjà vu, asking the owner of the B&B “Do you ever have déjà vu, Mrs. Lancaster?”Phil goes throughout the first day recognizing a sense of familiarity with even the most mundane events. But Phil is the only one aware of this and is clearly the focus of this phenomenon. At the end of each day Phil heads back to his room ad wakes up the next morning at 6:00 am to the same song playing on the radio. While any concept of time progressing is nullified by the repetition of the day there is a clear progression in Phil’s behavior as he begins to rack up the February 2s.  Having been a man who saw himself as in his way to bigger things there is an irony in the fact that he is now caught in this pattern of waking up stuck in the same place. A place he is desperate to escape; or at least he is desperate initially. 

As he accrues Groundhog Days the obviously self-imposed alienated Phil reminds us of the groundhog celebration itself and we are the spectators wondering if he will come out of the hole and see his shadow. It is awkward to watch such a self-satisfied person turn to others to find a solution to his problem. First he sees a medical doctor and then a psychologist to try and understand this sense of helplessness in the face of an unexplained and unyielding time loop. What is the point? And why this day? Exasperated by the inability to find answers Phil looks for solace in the working man’s therapy, drinking at the local bowling alley where he inquires of his fellow patrons “What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same? And nothing that you did mattered?” Is Phil talking about his current circumstance or his life as a whole? We get the idea that Phil’s dilemma is a more universal struggle when one of the men at the bar responds “That about sums it up for me.” When Phil decides these drinking buddies are too drunk to drive themselves home he is inspired to take the first step in his philosophical journey when he asks them what would they do if there was no tomorrow and they point out that if there is no tomorrow there are no consequences and so they would do whatever they felt inclined to do. This strikes a chord with Phil and so begins his life of hedonism. He continues to pay little attention to the feelings and experiences of those around him and decides to throw caution to the wind. When Rita sees him chain smoking and eating a gluttonous meal she asks him why he does not care about his health and quality of life and he responds “I don’t worry about anything, anymore” as he stuffs pastry into his mouth. Rita is disgusted and sums up the state of Phil’s character with a line from a Sir Walter Scott poem:

"The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung"

Phil is a selfish self-centered person who will ultimately live and die alone. 

As the Groundhog Days continue to accrue we have no real sense of how much time conceptually has passed but Phil has become familiar with the people and events of the town and the notion of living a life led by impulse and  satiating desires begins to lose its shine. This is when he focuses his attention on Rita. And yet he is still looking to gain something for himself without really looking to himself for the solution to the problem at hand. He pursues Rita by adapting himself to the type of man she would be attracted to a standard he learns by repeating his interactions with her and extracting more information each time. His purpose becomes wooing her by proving he is a man who meets her criteria. But it is all flash and no substance. As the days continue to repeat themselves Phil finds no real happiness in this façade as he wakes up the next morning to the dreaded tune of I Got You Babe and either the night before had ended with a slap in the face or with Rita gone from his room. It seems in the disingenuousness of his existence has become mechanical even while pursuing something that could ultimately contribute to his happiness, like a meaningful relationship with Rita. Up to this point in Phil’s journey to discover some redeeming kind of meaning and happiness in the mechanical monotony of everyday life he has managed to accomplish the things that fail to do so.

When he wakes up again on February 2^nd at 6:00am after all his hedonistic efforts Phil has moved on to the fatalistic attempts to end this repetitive existence. As Rita and Larry watch in disbelief Phil describes the town festivities for the camera in this way:

This is pitiful. 1,000 people freezing their butts off waiting to worship a rat. What a hype! Groundhog Day used to mean something in this town. They used to pull the hog out and they used to eat it. Your hypocrites, all of you! ...You want a prediction about the weather? You’re asking the wrong Phil I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s gonna be cold. It’s gonna be gray. And it’s going to last you for the rest of your life.

And the very next scene is a montage of Phil waking up and smashing the clock radio to the sound of Sonny Cher. And his next news report perfectly reflects Phil’s larger existential problem “there is no way this winter is ever going to end as long as this groundhog keeps seeing his shadow. He has to be stopped and I have to stop him”; meaning he cannot take this life anymore and the only solution is to end it all. When Phil’s attempts at ending his life through a variety a ways i.e. driving off a cliff with the groundhog at the wheel, diving off a building, walking into oncoming traffic, and getting into the bath with a toaster he is forced out of this philosophy of ending his existence as the focus of his existence. We get to see the toll Phil’s journey of self-discovery takes on Larry and more frequently Rita in moments shown on-screen by the reactions they have to his behaviors. But the next day it is all fresh. Nothing has happened yet. But not for Phil.

            It is finally when Phil acknowledges the value in learning and improving himself by taking piano lessons, ice sculpting lessons, avid reading, and learning about the people around him in a more sincere and selfless. When he tells Rita that he has killed himself so many times that he doesn’t even exist anymore she tells him that having all this time on his hands could actually be a good thing, how much he could accomplish with “eternity”. Even after he begins to develop a real connection with Rita, it is not until he focuses on developing himself and then using those skills and talents to improve the community i.e. saving an ungrateful kid when he falls from a tree, changing the tire on a car full of elderly women, saving the mayor from choking, and doing all in his power to keep the old homeless man he ignored at the beginning of the film from dying. It is only after Phil takes an active role in his life as well as the life of others that he seems to enjoy life, as repetitive as it is, having made real connections with people and placed a value on his relationships. This is when he finally wakes up the next day with Rita by his side.

            Since this movie came out in 1993 it has been one of my favorites. It is a masterful film that forces us to take a look out the most basic philosophical issues of how to be happy and what makes life worth living in a comedic and almost imperceptible way. The theme of the groundhog seeing his shadow, a signal of 6 more weeks of winter, is parallel to that of our desperate need for Phil to come out of his hole of self-absorption and see that spring is on its way , that there is meaning and happiness to be found in living; and we get that glimpse when in his last Groundhog Day report on scene the once gloomy pessimist states,” When Chekhov saw the long winter he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the warmth of their hearths and hearts I couldn’t imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter.” This Phil has finally discovered what it is to truly live.