One of my first real jobs in high school was working at a video store. I was the runner, which meant that I would take the newly returned movies and place them back on the shelves. I ended up having a lot of downtime while still technically being at work. One of the perks of working there was that we were able to watch movies the whole time. Well not so much watch them as exist in the same general area as they were playing. Still given a long enough timeline you were bound to see one of the movies in its entirety. It could just happen over the course of a week. Since this was a family place there were only so many movies you could really play without offending someone. One of these movies was Groundhog Day, which may be close to a perfect movie and one of the last Bill Murray movies where he was still in 'original' Murray mode, like he was in Ghostbusters and Scrooged.
This is a movie that is a bit surreal to watch in bits and pieces because you may not always know where he is at any given point since so many of the repeated scenes have only slight differences. Over the years though I've seen this movie countless times and it's one that if it comes on I'll probably be fine watching it, even if I catch it somewhere in the middle. Being the movie nerd that I am I started to really think about some of the implications of what's going on in this movie. Sure I could take the movie at face value, but that'd make for a really short post and that's now how I think so let's get started.
First off, either Phil Connors is an incredibly slow learner or the universe is mercilessly cruel. It took him several years to make it through that one day. Years to learn all the things that needed to be done right so that he'd be the kind of man that Rita would want. There has been a lot of speculation on exactly how much time passed since he started repeating the day, but a safe assumption is that it's more than ten years and likely less than fifty. Think about all the things that happen in a single day and he was somehow required to do them in a specific way. Plus he's still just a person so he may not remember what happened three and a half years ago when he tried this one thing. He had no way of knowing which combination of deeds and actions would lead him out of the maze that had become February 2nd. It was a lot of trial and error, which we saw as he kept behaving as his old self.
That brings me to the next thing. It's implied at the end that Phil has finally become a better person and saw people as being generally good if you give them a chance. He realizes that maybe Punskatanee isn't such a bad place. We assume that he's escaped the repetition that was Groundhog Day and will live the rest of his non-repeating days with Rita. This is all very wonderful for the sake of a two hour movie. What if though the next morning when he wakes up he's now trapped in February 3rd and has to go through that day over and over until he figures out how to move onto the next day. Wouldn't this be the equivalent of being trapped in Hell?
Speaking of which, if it happened to Phil, could it happen to other people? I mean are they living in a universe where bad people (or at least people who behave like jerks) are punished by having to relive a day over and over again until they become a better person? What's the criteria for this? Is it just mean weathermen or would say the African warlord, who is slaughtering children be on the list as well? Maybe it's just happening in that tiny town, but would that mean Phil is the only one to experience it, or just the first? Plus there doesn't seem to be any real rules as to what's the 'correct' way to proceed through a day. We saw at the end Phil helped a ton of people in a single day and was loved by anyone who came across him. That would mean though before the last day he saved the guy from choking and changed the tire of the old ladies. Alone those things weren't enough for him to escape, but together they added up to enough through some invisible tally system that Phil didn't know about until he woke up.
And while we're on the subject of him waking up, what's is happening to all those other realities that Phil keeps resetting? Those are people with lives and souls and with only one exception, that world seems to cease to exist once Phil kills himself. Are those worlds continuing on with all the mistakes that Phil made? Is the world where Phil stole the groundhog and drove it and himself off a cliff into a fiery explosion still going on, trying to make sense of what just happened? What are those people's lives like in the aftermath of that? It seems either several lives were traumatized for the sake of teaching one jerk a lesson on humanity or they were snuffed out once Phil died. Either one is kind of terrible. If those realities continue on, what happened to the countless ones where Phil didn't kill himself? Are they just floating out there, wondering what happened to him now that he's vanished after going to sleep?
Finally, in this world or worlds, are there any people with free will? Phil had to do everything right to progress to the next day. He was beaten down until he finally submitted to how the Universe told him that a day was supposed to happen. If this is happening to other people then it's likely that you have people who aren't like Phil, in that they learned something, but rather they finally figured out what was necessary to get to the next day or were broke to the point that they just gave in to whatever the whims of the Universe dictated at that moment. Never mind the poor souls who just couldn't get their day right, no matter how many times they tried. They're off living the same day over and over for all of eternity.
In the end Phil may have been forced to become a better person. It was a valuable lesson I'm sure. One that took him possibly decades to learn. He's now like someone who was just released from prison. He only knows the routine of Groundhog Day. How is he going to cope with living in a reality where he doesn't know exactly what's going to happen next? Plus he's mentally aged by at least ten years, maybe more. That will likely have shifted his perspective quite a lot. Granted the new and improved Phil Connors may now see the world entirely differently and be thankful for his extended time trapped in a single day. Betterment through attrition is still betterment right?
