Round and Round He Goes

How any films can say they've become part of our annual tradition? Sure, you get a few Christmas movies every year, such as It's a Wonderful Life, and (yuck) A Christmas Story, and Die Hard. Some try to make a case for other works, like watching Independence Day on Independence Day. Most of those, though, have some connective moment with people, a reason for them to want to celebrate "the season" (whatever that season might be). No one is going around saying, "man, I really want to watch Day of the Triffids on Arbor Day," though.

And yet, one movie has become a part of our cultural collection, a film that many will watch, each year because it ties in to a holiday. It's a stupid holiday, one that doesn't even get most of us a day off (so, yeah, like Arbor Day), and yet every year it comes around and we all pay at least a little bit of attention. That day is Groundhog Day, the day some forest rodent crawls out of his dirt hole and looks at the sky, and if for some reason he goes back in the hole we're supposed to assume Spring will arrive quickly. It's stupid, a dumb holiday given significance by myth and legend.

So why do we really care about this day, February 2nd? Because it allows us to watch a fantastic comedy, Groundhog Day. This film manages to be one of Bill Murray's best works, a film that goes from absurdist farce to sarcastic introspection, all the way to drama and fulfillment, all around one character. Bill Murray has turned in better performances in one of more aspects of that -- he's at his sarcastic best in Ghostbusters and for dramatic work he knocked it out of the park in Lost in Translation -- but as far as bringing it all together, he can't be beat in Groundhog Day. That's why this film lives on: it hits all the beats.

Of course, the premise also helps. In the film, Murray plays Phil Connors, a prima donna "talent" weatherman working at a local Pennsylvania station. There's really no reason for him to be as uppity as he is; after all, he's just a weatherman. But her certainly is high on his own supply, treating everyone around him from his producer, Rita (Andie McDowell), to, well, everyone else, like garbage. It's just the way this little asshole operates.

Thus it's fitting when the universe serves Phil up with a healthy dose of schadenfreude Out in Puxatawney, PA, to cover the annual reveal of the groundhog, Phil finds himself stuck in a time loop. Every day he wakes at 6:00 AM and every day he's forced to relive February 2nd, the same February 2nd, over and over again. Understandably he goes a little nuts at the start, trying to find the benefits of his "immortality". He can't die, he can't be punished for what he does. He can either wallow in his infinity, or find a way to improve who he is. He chooses the later, and that's where his growth begins.

Although Groundhog Day wasn't the first "time loop" story every released, it is certainly the most famous. This film was a big enough hit that it single-handedly popularized the "time loop genre". At this point you can't find a genre show that doesn't at least do one time loop episode somewhere in its span. It's a trope in sci-fi and fantasy, and while arguably Phil getting caught in a time loop is a tad fantastic, it's interesting that genre shows always tend to do time loop shows because Groundhog Day is otherwise not a fantasy. It's really just a comedy.

Unlike other time loop works to come out since Groundhog Day, this film feels no need to explain why Phil is stuck in his loop. Call it cosmic justice, if you want, but frankly the film isn't really concerned with the "why for" of Phil's predicament. Instead of him trying to find a way to escape one way or another, instead Phil tries to figure out what the loop means for him. And that's a curious thing in his own right because, despite the cosmic comeuppance of it all, one could make the case that, for all his "self improvement", Phil doesn't really change at all.

Oh, sure, Phil goes around trying to save everyone in the town by the end of the film. He's changing tires, rescuing fallen kids, providing the Heimlich to choking eaters, but he does all this because he's thinks he's a god. He says this halfway into the film: "I'm a god." He can't die, he remembers everything from every loop before, and he just keeps on going, living in this little slice of Pennsylvania for all eternity. And, depending on which version of the story you buy into, he could have been on this one "day" for 10,000 years. In all that time, Phil never really stops thinking of himself as the center of the universe.

Now, if we're being kind, Phil does end up falling for Rita, making her the center of his world. He takes up ice sculpting, piano playing, reading French poetry, and all kinds of other skills because Rita says these are things she likes in a man. He builds himself to be the perfect person for her, which is sweet in its own way. Of course, the fact that she's only known him for a day while he's known one, unchanging version of her for 10,000 years does tend to color their relationship. Suffice it to say you don't expect things to go well for them once Phil makes it out of the loop. He probably goes insane and ends up in a home, never to be seen again.

But you don't think about all this in the moment, though, because Murray makes Phil oddly likable. He makes the movie work around him, being the center of everything happening while keeping you invested. It's hard to think of many actors at the time that could have done this, but Murray pulls it off. You like seeing Phil improve himself, making himself into the man Rita deserves. You appreciate that because he finally made himself into something approximating a whole human being he gets released from his one-day hell. It's nice, and because Murray acts through the movie with his curmudgeonly charm, you just go along for the ride. 1993 Bill Murray pulled it off and it probably wouldn't work for anyone else, not even current Bill Murray.

There have been stories that have come out, shedding a bad light on the performer. There are harassment complaint against him now, and some stories about him even from the height of his Box office dominance that really make him look like a lecherous creep (the stories Geena Davis has are particularly bad). That does color watching him in anything now, so maybe, down the road, we will all collectively say, "hey, maybe we don't watch Groundhog Day this year." Maybe Phil works so well because he really is just Bill Murray, through and through.

We'll see if we all feel the need to keep watching this movie but, for now it's still on everyone's calendars (well, maybe not Geena Davis's). It is a fun movie, especially if you can ignore the recent Bill Murray-ness of it all. It's a classic of the time loop form that still works. Murray may be a creep now, but Phil Connors was always a sleaze and, really, that's why we liked him: he was a sleaze but he got better... sort of.