"Groundhog Day" and religion

[IAmZamzam]

Mild spoilers ahead, necessary for discussion of the topic.

When Harold Ramis released the film Groundhog Day in 1993, he heard that in some places there were situations like people from a local Jewish synagogue standing around outside the theater holding signs not protesting against the film but instead saying things like, "Do YOU find yourself living the same day over and over?" Ramis was deluged with letters from Ascetic Jews, Yogis, Jesuits, Buddhists, etc., all saying the same thing: "You must be one of us! This is THE (name of religious movement) movie!"

Danny Rubin, who co-wrote the film with Ramis, has been described by Ramis as "somewhat of a Zen Buddhist". Indeed, the notion of someone being stuck in a potentially endless cycle of repetitions and being unable to escape it even through death but instead only by perfecting oneself is rather a Buddhist concept. The original draft of the screenplay had Murray's character Phil repeating the cycle for ten thousand years--a rather Buddhist number. (Ramis says that in the film it turns out to be more like a decade: this accounts for Phil becoming a world-class expert in ice-sculpting and keyboarding, learning French, spending six months perfecting the worthless art of flicking cards into a hat at a distance, seeing the same film over eighty times at a theater, and learning all about the town and it's people and what's going on in it at all times.) Rubin commented on the film's character arc involving "emptying the self to become a better person" in an ecumenical, universally identifiable way.

One scene in particular always intrigued me. After the day where Phil finally starts to break down and become more openly vulnerable and personable and compassionate, he has a perfect culminating scene of great sweetness as he reads in bed to his love Rita. This is where most screenwriters would have had him break the cycle, when it's only truly beginning to pay off but would still make for an emotionally satisfying ending. Instead, Phil wakes up once more to "I Got You Babe" on the alarm clock. Interestingly, he doesn't look the least bit disappointed. Instead, he stands up, gets this odd pensive look about him, and gives the slightest nod. I've always thought that this nod was to God, whom he finally recognizes at that point as being behind the whole thing. He's thinking, "All right, I think I get it now. I'll do what you've set me to do here." After that he starts making a point of making each day into the best he can no matter how many times it's the same day, and he only improves henceforth when before he had only been degenerating.

He's definitely praying when he finally gives up on trying to save the elderly hobo's life. You see him blatantly look up at the sky after the man breathes his last before Phil for maybe the fiftieth time (though only the second or third we see), and the look in his eyes could be interpreted as any number of mixed feelings and prayers. Bill Murray's acting could not be any better.

At one point in the suicide montage--and this moment makes for the most beauteous one in the movie--Phil throws himself off a church roof in an obvious crucifix pose. Interpret that as you will. I think that it probably means he feels martyred at that point but is still determined to die. He still hasn't let go of his own grandiosity. The whole point of the dying hobo segment, according to Ramis, was to get Phil to accept that he is not "a god" himself--that even with the chance of potentially infinite do-overs there are still some things that he will be powerless to change.

But he is not powerless to change himself, and that is the key thing. Regardless of what religion you practice, the ultimate message is always that sticking with life's endless routine and bettering yourself spiritually, morally, through even a thousand disappointments will eventually lead you to release. And even the non-religious can identify with the message that no matter how many times the good we do gets the reset switch hit and we have to start over again, we must keep doing it anyway even if there is only a theoretical chance that it may stick someday. And that in pursuing this ostensibly bleak path, we may find more happiness and betterment than we could have ever dared expect.