Groundhog Day (1993) – Auteur
As February draws near each year, like clockwork, my Pennsylvanian roots start to tingle and I feel the call pulling me westward, coursing through my veins, a faint whisper growing stronger: “show us the groundhog.” I, an expert-in-training, respect experts and their training; their professional analyses and opinions are more important than ill-informed perspectives garbled out 280-characters at a time with the phrase “I did my own research” embedded in their spirit. But, on February 2nd there is no more experienced expert than Mother Nature to tell me whether March 21st is coming faster or slower than expected, and that hallowed Mother takes her form in the tiny ethereal god we chant to from our souls: Phil the groundhog.
So, this week I watched Harold Ramis’s Groundhog Day (1993) in honour of our Punxsutawney deity. The Review Roulette wheel also landed on auteur as out theory, and truthfully I find that a fascinating challenge. Ramis, on the face, is not someone I think of as having a particular directorial style but having a bit of a think on the oeuvre of his films I have seen, I think he has a philosophy that guides some of the projects he pursues and that’s what I want to talk about here.
Groundhog Day follows Phil Connors (Bill Murray), an arrogant, self-righteous, egotistical weatherman from Pittsburgh who believes he is worth more than local news and refers to himself as “the talent”. Connors gets stuck in a time-loop, cursed to repeat Groundhog Day for what seems an eternity as he experiences the mental anguish of immortality, loneliness, despair, desperation, depression, love-loss, self-reflection, cultural enrichment, ideological exploration, and an internal renaissance of spirit. Hilarity obviously ensues, but each time I see this film, I am struck by the absolute beauty of its expressions of each of these states of being and genuinely impressed with Murray’s range in delivering them.
And this is what struck me about some of Ramis’s other films including Caddyshack (1980), Multiplicity (1996), and Bedazzled (2000): there’s a real exploration of what it means to exist in Ramis’s films embedded in the comedy. Caddyshack (which I have reviewed before) questions our world through the systems and structures that make up our society while the main character questions how to reconcile his wants and needs within them. Multiplicity introduces the idea of multiple versions of the self and questions what we will or will not miss by compartmentalising parts of our lives and being too self-involved to recognise the needs of our loved ones. Bedazzled, one of my favourite films, explores the difference between desires, wants, and needs and similarly to Groundhog Day ends on a moralising note of selflessness.
This pattern in Ramis’s films is a fascinating reminder of the intention behind comedy and cinema. In our current world when so many “comedians” are being called out for what they think are “jokes” but are really just the authentical thoughts from a racist, sexist, homophobe, etc. looking for positive confirmation that their hateful ideas can be made acceptable if just one person laughs in agreement, it’s refreshing to remember that comedy is not just “telling jokes”. When comedy is done with purpose, it’s an actual artform and a way of exploring the human condition through humour.
Ramis’s films are not perfect (though few films are) and some lean more into the philosophical exploration of existence more than others, but I think these examples really use comedy in a very purposeful way to get at something much deeper than a cheap laugh. In Groundhog Day for example, one recurring theme and later specific scene that might be read as sexist are the ways in which Phil uses his wealth of time to exploit women for sexual gratification and subsequently how he then uses that same tactic on the main lead opposite him, Rita (Andie MacDowell). Phil pressures her into situations without her knowledge of how he knows so much about her and in one scene that begins almost charmingly, he begins to more aggressively insist she stay, frustrated that he has put in the time to know her yet they have not had sex. Phil is aware that she has no recollection of their previous days together and the scene becomes increasingly uncomfortable and desperate for Rita to leave, which ultimately and thankfully she does.
In no way does the film condone Phil’s behaviour or suggest that Rita owes him sex. On the contrary, the rest of the film focuses on Phil’s self-reflection after his attempts to sleep with Rita and the ways he builds from that toxic place of refusing to consider her perspective, wants, and needs all while maintaining the same comedy as the vehicle for many of those internal changes. And it is masterfully done.
While each of these films have some supernatural element to them, I think that gives more freedom to the philosophical explorations within them. In another scene, Phil is drinking with some locals discussing his immortal quandary, optimism, and pessimism when he asks, "What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?" To this, one of the drunken patrons answers sombrely and heavily, "That about sums it up for me.” There is gravity to this reflection and a reality injected into the film that while Phil is trapped in an extreme time-loop supernatural in origin, many people become trapped in a metaphorical time-loop of their own due to personal choices, structural inequalities, financial constraints, or other means that gradually chip away at the edges of the soul and corner an individual into their allotted hole in life, only sometimes prompted with the grace to emerge from that hole and maybe see their shadow as an opportunity to reflect. Both Phils, groundhog and man, are granted that rare chance here.
To fully acknowledge my own pet peeve with auteur theory, the director is not the only influence or even necessarily the originator of the ideas within the screenplay, but Ramis chose to make these films and did have influences over the scripts and production. His ideas and decisions within the creation of these films cannot be discounted, and I think we can in fact credit him with the pattern of overlapping questions about the human condition within his works as director.
Because I’m Never Done When I Say I Am
(Kinda) Genre
As an expert-in-training, I’m going to whip out the Christmas film card. No, Groundhog Day is not a Christmas film, but I would argue that in the genre of “egotistical prick is forced by supernatural intervention to realise his faults and become a better person” it’s significantly better than Murray’s Scrooged (1988) in both execution and acting. I am a fan of Scrooged and I think it’s a well-conceived adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol; however, I also think that Groundhog Day could be argued as an adaptation of it as well or at least heavily influenced by it and another of its adaptations, It’s a Wonderful Life (1946). Groundhog Day explores the actual process of becoming new and the work involved in self-reflection, granting Phil not an evening of guided meditation and jump scares, but rather a perceived eternity until he figures out on his own the value of time, life, love, and a less selfish existence. It deserves to be in conversation with those films.