February 2 was Groundhog Day. As I do every year on that day, I watched the movie Groundhog Day. Ok, I watched it twice.
To say that I love this movie would be to seriously understate my feelings. I believe that this 1993 film starring Bill Murray and Andi MacDowell is among the most perfect of the 20th Century and ranks in the top 20 pieces of art during the same 100-year period. Murray said that Danny Rubin was touched by God when he wrote the screenplay.
Like many great works of art, Groundhog Day has become a cliché drained of meaning for many. Even people who have never seen the film understand the reference that has entered our cultural vocabulary. The year just ended sealed the meme and 2020 became Groundhog Day incarnate. That is to say like a day that repeats over and over. Not in a good way.
For the first half of the movie, this is indeed how Phil, a weatherman who seems to be living the same February 2nd over and over, sees the repetition: a monotonous, monstrous reality from which he can’t escape. But Phil is missing the crucial piece of the puzzle; the day only seems the same; in reality he is able to change, to learn, to grow.
Some fans have estimated that Phil is stuck in the time loop for 30-40 years, others say 1,000 years, but regardless, it is not until well into the second half of the film’s running time that Phil is capable of seeing he has actually been given a gift. The turning point comes at the end of a day that he has spent with Andi MacDowell’s character Rita. She has come to believe that he is telling her the truth about his being stuck in time. It’s evening and they are sitting on the bed in Phil’s hotel room. Phil is teaching her to flick cards into a hat. The viewer understands that he has spent huge amounts of time doing this and has become proficient, even a master – at flicking cards into a hat.
“Is this what you do with eternity?” she asks him.
Then Rita utters the words that change everything and Phil at that moment is ready to hear it.
“Well, sometimes I wish I had a thousand lifetimes. I don’t know, Phil, maybe it’s not a curse. Just depends on how you look at it.”
When Phil wakes again, it is still February 2 and Rita has vanished but now he is ready to receive the gift and do the work that lies ahead.
Are we all are living in a kind of Groundhog Day? Maybe, but what if it’s not a curse? Whatever is going on in the world, we can change, we can learn, we can grow. There is one crucial way that our situation differs from Phil’s; we aren’t granted a thousand lifetimes to get it right. As far as we know, just the one.
Curse or a gift? Just depends on how you look at it.
Oh, that illusion we call Groundhog Day? It’s our life and the work is before us.