It’s that day. Again.
You know what day I’m talking about. All together now: Groundhog Day!
Really, what could be more appropriate on Groundhog Day than a repeat of an old essay about the movie, a personal favorite of mine?
In discussions of the film “Groundhog Day” on this blog, I’ve noticed a couple of people questioning why the Bill Murray character would find Andie McDowell’s Rita deserving of all those years of his devotion and energy. For example, “…[W]hat, exactly, made the lovely but, let’s face it, vapid Rita worthy of Phil’s centuries of effort?”
My answer is that he discovered love. Yes, Rita was beautiful, and a good human being with many excellent qualities. But of course she was imperfect, and over the years (centuries? millennia?) Phil no doubt had learned just about all of her flaws. Still, it didn’t matter to him because it wasn’t about Rita, exactly—it was about the fact that, somewhere along the long path of his transformation to wisdom, he finally understood that every person in town, including the ones he couldn’t tolerate at the beginning, was worthy of his attention—and of something one might call “love,” in its broadest sense.
And somewhere along the way to that knowledge, Phil’s efforts in “Groundhog Day” stopped being about getting into Rita’s pants or even getting her to love him, although that certainly took up a larger percentage of his time (and the movie’s length) than some of his other pursuits. But he probably spent at least as much time learning to play the piano (a form of love, too), or to carve ice sculptures, or to become skilled at some of the more mindless and meaningless tricks he mastered, or learning details about the life of almost everyone in town.
Was the old derelict, whose life Phil tried to save over and over and over, “worth it” either? Such questions no longer mattered to him, because the gesture and the effort were worth it, and every life was worth something to him.
Rita, of course, had always been physically attractive to Phil. But as the film (and time) wore on—and on—she became the object not just of eros, but of agape as well. By the end of the movie, I think that Phil had come to appreciate the idea of the theme and variations versus the symphony, which I wrote about here:
And, although walking repeatedly in the same place is very different from traveling around the world and walking in a new place every day, is it really so very much less varied? It depends on the eye and mind of the beholder; the expansive imagination can find variety in small differences, and the stunted one can find boredom in vast changes.
And I submit that love is like that, too. Some people spend a lifetime with one love, one spouse; plumbing the depths of that single human being and what it means to be in an intimate relationship with him/her. Others go from relationship to relationship, never alighting with one person for very long, craving the variety.
It would seem on the face of it that the second type of person has the more exciting time in love. But it ain’t necessarily so. Either of these experiences can be boring or fascinating, depending on what we bring to it: the first experience is a universe in depth, and the second a universe in breadth. But both can contain multitudes.
Towards the end of the film [SPOILER ALERT!!], Phil makes it clear that he has given up the pursuit of Rita entirely, and immersed himself in his love for her instead. Is this what finally frees him to re-enter the flow of time? [The next two clips combined give you a rough version of the movie’s end; I couldn’t find one clip that showed the whole thing]:
[NOTE: For more on the philosophical and theological underpinnings of the film, please see this and this.]
One of my favorite movies of all time.
Also like Jonah Goldberg’s column on Groundhog Day, written about 10 years ago and rerun by NRO every year on Feb. 2:
http://www.nationalreview.com/article/228088/movie-all-time-jonah-goldberg
I have read all of your short essays on this cinema classic and you have made me think about why I am so fond of the film, and it is exactly because it makes me delve into the big, wide open question of what is ‘love’. I still do not know the definition of love, but I know it when I feel it. Love of wife of 44 years, children, grandchildren, siblings, extended family, and close friends are various forms of the experience we call love.
But love also encompasses more nebulous things such as locations, art, and what I call fundamental principles. Love is eternally at war with evil. That struggle will never end.
Yes, Rita and Phil are both imperfect. But it seems clear to me that Rita is as uncaring about others as Phil is, but a lot more superficial and full of herself: she demands a mate that is attractive, plays a musical instrument, speaks French poetry, and seduces her without making any conscious effort to do so. So why isn’t Rita sent to purgatory instead of Phil?
The movie was funny and well-done, but it portrays a contempt for men and for male sexuality.
LTEC:
She doesn’t demand anything. She has preferences, just like everyone else. Don’t you? Nor is she mean or thoughtless to a single person in the film. I actually have no idea what you’re talking about.
You may find her boring, and you may not agree with her preferences in men (I don’t necessarily have the same preferences in men as she does, either) but your characterization of her is way off.
And the film makes no judgment on male sexuality either. Phil is allowed to be just as sexual as he wants (and he certainly has plenty of sex in the film with other people) and it’s played for laughs. The film never suggests he’s being punished in any way because he likes sex! It does, however, indicate he’s punished for being a nasty, selfish person in a much more general sense (if in fact he’s being “punished” at all).
The message isn’t about sex, it’s about love, and it’s not about love VERSUS sex, either. Phil learns how to love. If that ends up enhancing his sex life by the end (and the film doesn’t comment on that one way or the other), well, that’s a bonus.
Are you suggesting that male sexuality can’t include love and sex combined? That men don’t love? Or that in order to not be accused by you of “contempt for men and male sexuality” the film must celebrate Phil’s hookups?
Shoulda knowed that. Dreams, last night… Yeah, definitely Groundhog Day.
Neo-neocon —
Rita is quite mean and thoughtless towards the Chris Elliott character, simply because she doesn’t find him attractive. And we certainly don’t see her going out of her way to help homeless people. She rejects Phil’s offer of sexuality simply because he is making no effort to appear to be something else.
“Phil is allowed to be just as sexual as he wants”, that is assuming he doesn’t mind being trapped forever in time. Surely people can disagree about WHY Phil is being punished (or reformed, or whatever). Perhaps it is for being nasty and selfish, although I fail to see in what way he is more nasty or selfish than Rita. But it’s hardly absurd to suggest that at least part of Phil’s problem is his open sexuality (the traditionally more male role) as opposed to Rita’s “innocent” female role of wanting to be swept off her feet without anyone trying.
And doesn’t Rita have to be taught something about “love”? That it’s not about French poetry and playing a musical instrument? Or about being swept off her feet? That maybe she should get too know the Chris Elliott character better?
On my short list for all time favorite movies.
For two decades, I’ve enjoyed hearing similar assessments and appreciations of this film from Dennis Prager.
What an unlikely actor to play the lead, at least as the romantic. His comedic timing and his playfulness works exquisitely.
Great entertainment…
Some people have a tendency to over analyze this film, if given any attention.
It’s a movie. Entertainment.
However, the lessons within it are there for those with eyes to see.
Every human being is imperfect. Each make their share of mistakes, large and small. Each travel their individual path, of experiencing, of sharing, of coexisting, of learning. Each human awakens to a new day. Having learned from the day before. To learn again. Anew. From mistakes made, or, to slog along while making them again. And again. And again.
Because love is such a major theme in the movie, it reminds one of the familiar pearls of wisdom, such as this one:
“If you love something, let it go. If it comes back to you, its yours forever. If it doesn’t, then it was never meant to be.” Anonymous
Phil is faced with letting go of Rita each day. With the thought in mind that it is not meant to be. And yet, the audience is delivered the opportunity to witness the chances he’s provided to, “play it again”, tweaking, adjusting, all the while learning. Over and over. Not quitting. Striving for that which eludes him. Drives him. Ultimately, a revelatory “purpose”. Love.
CTEC:
You must be watching another movie.
Rita’s fine to the Chris Elliot character, far nicer than Phil is to him, and the Chris Elliot character is quite obnoxious himself, so I have no idea where you get off saying that any lack of niceness anyone in the movie would have toward the Chris Elliot character is because he’s physically unattractive. Boy, I missed the part where his character is so charming and kind and wonderful but Rita says he’s just not hot enough!
And you are free to think that Phil’s being punished for his sexuality, but there’s nothing in the movie that indicates that, nor is he liberated from the Groundhog Day trap the moment he stops pursuing Rita sexually. He’s got a long long way to go, a lot more to learn.
I think you completely (and I mean completely) missed the point of the movie. Clarity Seeker has stated it quite well in the comment right above this one.
It’s unclear exactly why Phil is singled out for “punishment” (or, rather, enlightenment), but he is. There is no suggestion that anyone else in the movie is perfect, or near-perfect, or anything of the sort, including Rita! But for some unexplained reason Phil is given an opportunity to learn much more than most humans ever know in this lifetime about love—not just sexual love, or even romantic love, but human love (including of the elderly man whose life he tries to save over and over), and also love of art and music and activity of all sorts and even the banal and obnoxious Ned the insurance salesman. Learning to love Rita is only a small part of the love he must learn.
I am basically with LTEC on this. I just watched this for the umpteenth time with wife #2 who actually never “sat through the whole thing” so I was a veteran and she was a newbie, and my exact comment at the end was “why would any man after 100s of years find MacDowell interesting at all?” She agreed.
After all that time he knows French, poetry (and French poetry), piano, ice sculpting, and so on. He has developed himself into a Renaissance man after years of a long, long adolescence. She is a bit vapid, hasn’t grown at all during this time, and quite frankly I don’t see why he (or any man quite frankly) would find her interesting at all. As pointed out above she doesn’t have to work at all in this relationship and just has to just “be there”. Pure female fantasy.
One of my other points to the wife was that it was only when he stopped pursuing her and focused on his ice sculpting, piano and so on did she find him very interesting. And of course at that point in real life his intellectual pursuits would have left her in the dust . Only because it’s a movie with a large female audience does the love interest continue, when in real life we hear of creative geniuses and their long suffering partners (Tolstoy, Picasso, Hemmingway, etc.).
So in the end this is a fantasy in all ways – one that I truly enjoy for its existential commentary and existential comedy – but it is also a fantasy in the relationship sense, just like any other romcom.
Daisy day
Is there a last supper for us rubes?
Us old people with oxygen tubes,
who drive smack dab into people
because we’re too old and feeble?
Daisy whip the white underwear.
Make sure you’re young and don’t care,
whether the white or red nail polish
is on your nails when you perish.
Daisy don’t care.
I thought I had a last supper fine,
but it wasn’t what I wanted,
and the jailor said no so I tore
my shirt and a green line. Hey!
Daisy whip up the white water
and find your grandmother.
She lived a lot longer
and she’s living in your father.
Daisy, whip the white ladies,
who said gravy but made heartaches.
Daisy don’t buy the flowers
meant for the graves of others.
This is my birthday, so that’s much more impportant to me than a reasonably good Bill Murray film I don’t believe I’ll ever watch again, though who knows? This is also Candlemas Eve one of the witches’ sabbaths, if any here cares about that kind of thing.
Groundhog Day is one of my all-time favorite movies. Although it works on fabulously on different levels, it’s not entirely flawless.
Neo wrote:
There is no suggestion that anyone else in the movie is perfect, or near-perfect, or anything of the sort, including Rita!
I disagree, Neo. No one is supposed to be perfect, but IMHO Rita really should be (and I think was intended to be) a much, much more inspiring woman, the ultimate spark that finally frees Phil from his purgatory. Near the end of the film, Phil gives this heartfelt speech about how kind and wonderful and life-changing this woman is.
But instead, all we ever see–in a rare instance of poor writing–is a pretty bland, trite, lackluster Rita, and Andi MacDowell doing her wooden, mediocre best.
——-
So I’m somewhat in agreement with Director Mitch, though I don’t think she’s quite that boring:
She is a bit vapid, hasn’t grown at all during this time, and quite frankly I don’t see why he (or any man quite frankly) would find her interesting at all.
Also, unless I’m missing something, Phil is the only character who has any opportunity to “grow” over the seemingly endless repetitions of Groundhog Day. My understanding is that every other character’s slate is wiped clean and they start anew each day.
I definitely like the movie a lot and watched multiple parts of the marathon yesterday on AMC. But there are weak points that come out the more I watch it. Fundamentally, since the movie takes place in one day for all the characters except Phil, we’re supposed to believe Rita goes from holding him in near contempt for his misanthropy to falling in love with him in about 12 hours. It’s basically required by the structure of the movie and the movie’s gimmick but doesn’t rate very high on the plausibility scale and therefore rings a false note at the end. And as other people have said, the reason he focuses his attention on her is less then clear. Surely there was a more interesting and compelling woman somewhere in town. Also, did anyone else wince at Andi McDowell’s recitation of French poetry? I’m no poetry expert but it seemed really wooden and lacking in feeling for the material. Totally unconvincing as a moment in the movie.
Having said all that, I really like the movie. Bill Murray is just very entertaining. Even while committing suicide. (Actually, I thought the darkest moment in the film was when he committed suicide by diving off the building. The look on his face and the stillness of his body as he plummeted was very affecting.)
Of course, it’s no “Midnight Run“.
One other comment I meant to make. To me, the phrase Groundhog Day automatically brings the concept of something repeating over and over to mind as my first thought. I no longer think about the groundhog and six more weeks of winter as my primary thought. This movie has completely changed the meaning of that phrase for me to the point where I sometimes subconsciously think the movie is playing on that concept whereas in reality it invented that concept. Right? That whole repetition thing didn’t exist before the movie. Groundhog Day was just that and nothing more. But now my mind can no longer separate the two.
I must admit that because of the behavior of so many of the actors and actresses I hold Hollywood in such contempt that it never occurred to me to examine the morality underlying the movie Groundhog Day. Trying to find morality in a Hollywood film is like trying to find food in a trash dump. There may be something good there but you have to exercise extreme caution since so much of it is toxic.
That said, I especially enjoyed the second link Neo provided to an article by Michael P. Foley. Did the author of Groundhog Day really have anything approaching Michael Foley’s insights? Perhaps or perhaps Foley like so many others is reading his beliefs back into the movie.
Director Mitch,
I promise you this. When you watch this with wife #8, you’re gonna love it. It’ll all make sense to you then…
Gary, Gary, Gary, seriously?
Rita is not supposed to grow “during this period”.
That you don’t get this is excusable. But for someone who labels oneself as a “Director” is a different matter.
The one changing is Phil. Everything remains the same. Everything——-except when Phil returns the next day with a “smidgen” more learnin’ under his belt.
IMHO, I see it that Rita has had far more experience with Phil PRIOR to the ONE DAY played over and over again. Just because he has learned to play the piano, learned to recite poetry, etc.———it is all revealed to Rita in that one day.
You expect a woman who has come to know the narcissistic, selfish, sarcastic, miserable nature of Phil over a greater period of time prior to that ONE DAY to be immediately enamored with him just because he’s revealed some new characteristic on Groundhog Day which, to her, does not immediately counter balance (negate) all of his previous behavior?
Really?
Well, damn, she’d be considered as pretty flakey if that did it for her.
Nope——-it takes a lot. A whole pile of newly revealed (in one day) redemptive qualities to get her proverbial juices flowing in a different direction. Those who fail to see this somehow infer that Rita is not experiencing all of this “change” in the span of ONE DAY. They somehow infer that she too is experiencing Phil’s metamorphosis over a great span of time and therefore should be adjusting accordingly. Not how it is—as written in the film. And, at the expense of redundancy, she’s seeing each of these NEW changes in the span of a few hours following all of Phil’s previously exhibited boorish behavior.
Rita’s character does not have the luxury of day after day after day to adjust to each change Phil has incorporated into his shtick.
Wow, that which escapes so many people in grasping the different perspective of Rita, is stultifying.
Those who expect that in the few short hours after arriving with Farthead Phil should be immediately bowled over, entirely swept-off-her-feet because he can ice sculpt, or recite French poetry. It’s only because Rita has had months and months and months of experiencing and knowing the real heel, Phil, that she is not so easily swayed in those scant hours in Punxsutawney, PA.
It takes a whole lot to undo the loser-lifetime of Phil.
Yeeeeesh…I’m no chick and even I get it. Many of my male friends also appreciate the fact that Rita is only living in those few hours of Groundhog Day—as if it is ONCE. And that Phil is stuck in years and years and years of reliving, relearning that one 24 hour period. Dennis Prager also “gets it”, proclaiming this as his favorite film.
Dennis writes above:
“Trying to find morality in a Hollywood film is like trying to find food in a trash dump. There may be something good there but you have to exercise extreme caution since so much of it is toxic.”
_______________________________________
Not much different from the perspective of Rita. At least with regard to Phil. All she’s known of Phil is his “toxicity”. So——she continually “exercises extreme caution” in being with Phil while on that “shoot” in Punxsutawney.
***I don’t judge Dennis for his disdain for Hollywood. I actually join Dennis.
***Nor do I judge Rita for her disdain towards Phil. She is there with him in a professional capacity. It’s her job. He’s simply an irascible, contemptuous, egotistical fellow employee who she has to endure to get her JOB done. “Toxicity”……yeah, that’s it…
Well said, Dennis.
Something I very much enjoy about this film is how much is left to the viewer’s imagination. We don’t know why Phil lives the same day over and over again; neither does he. We don’t know how long it will last, or even how long it DOES last. (He can’t keep track with marks on a wall, can he? One gets the impression that, if he wanted to keep track at the beginning, by the end it no longer matters to him.)
Nor do we know if this is happening to anyone else. We assume that, if anyone else in town was in Phil’s situation, Phil’s interactions with that person would change from day to day. But perhaps it’s happening one town over; Phil would never know. And perhaps it happened to someone you know; you would experience it as a spurt of personal growth that happened to someone else very suddenly, but otherwise you’d have no way of knowing, would you?
Perhaps it will happen to you someday. And if it does, perhaps one of the “frozen” people around you will smile knowingly and say, “Yes, that happened to me a few years back. Best thing that ever happened to me.” (And then they’ll say it again, day after day…)
My take on this movie is that Phil is a kind of Everyman (or everywoman, for that matter). We all basically “live the same day” over and over again. The question is, what do you do with each day? How do you respond to the people you interact with, from the love of your life to the homeless person you pass on the street? By the end of the film, Phil has learned (the hard way, through a lot of trial and error and common human shortcomings) that happiness or fulfillment lies not in self-satisfaction or selfishness but in self-giving. It’s a simple message but difficult to live consistently. For most of us it’s a lifelong conversion process, with a lot of falling short, but every day we get another chance to get it right.
Those who are focusing on whether or not Rita is attractive or
worthy of Phil’s love and attention are missing the point. It’s one person’s story — Phil’s. And Bill Murray was brilliant in
that role.
Clarityseeker wrote (2/3 @10:24):
Gary, Gary, Gary, seriously?
Rita is not supposed to grow “during this period”.
Did you read my comment? Here’s what I wrote:
Also, unless I’m missing something, Phil is the only character who has any opportunity to “grow” over the seemingly endless repetitions of Groundhog Day. My understanding is that every other character’s slate is wiped clean and they start anew each day.
Did I misunderstand your point? Because it seems pretty clear from the above that Rita cannot “grow ‘during this period'” since her mind, like everyone else’s except Phil’s, is reset at the beginning of each day.
Gary wrote:
“So I’m somewhat in agreement with Director Mitch, though I don’t think she’s quite that boring:
She is a bit vapid, hasn’t grown at all during this time, and quite frankly I don’t see why he (or any man quite frankly) would find her interesting at all.
1.) I am somewhat in agreement with Director Mitch…
2.) “She is a bit vapid, hasn’t grown at all during this time…”
Hmmm…..I saw an admission of agreement.
My bad.
Thanks for the clarity…
How much time? I was watching this again and in the bedroom scene at about 70 minutes in, the two Rita and Phil are discussing his situation. She says that she wishes she had a thousand lifetimes, which would be about 70,000 years. She could only have gotten the scale of his perdicament from him. And after this scene he launches into his attack on sainthood squared.
Otiose:
Take a look at the comments section here and you will find a lengthy (how appropriate!) discussion of the answer to your question.
Thanks neo for the link. I read all those comments last year and then some from other sites. And, when I watched it again this year I was attuned to any clues as to how long Phil was there and I noticed Rita’s comment.