Groundhog Day, or practice makes perfect

One of the funniest and most “duh!” moments in Harold Ramis’s 1993 Groundhog Day is early on, when TV weathercaster and self-styled prima donna Phil Connors (Bill Murray) comes down the stairs at his Punxsutawney bed and breakfast. It’s Feb. 2. Asked by another guest as to whether Punxsutawney Phil won’t see his shadow and therefore it will be an early spring, Phil replies, “I’m predicting March21st," which is the proverbial six more weeks of winter anyway, shadow or no shadow. So, duh, what’s the point of the age-old varmint’s fabled prediction?  Groundhog Day, the movie not the Pennsylvania event, has now become a cultural metaphor for the Coronavirus lockdown, with each day seeming a repeat of the one before with no change in sight. I was annoyed in early February when I couldn’t find Groundhog Day online suggesting it should always be available Feb. 2 as a collective cultural viewing tradition. But now Netflix is showing it. I remember seeing the flic when it first came out – in summery Naples, Florida, ha! – and laughing throughout. Seeing it again was a joy. But what is the point of this now comedic icon, enquiring minds want to know. The New York Times did a riff last week suggesting at the film’s “metaphysical” or at least philosophical underpinnings. Said chief film critic A. O. Scott, “At the heart of the Phil-Rita romance lies a marvelous temporal paradox." Rita (Andie MacDowell) is Phil’s new producer, (kind of) has a crush on him but is repeatedly turned off by his innate jerkness. A lot of people in the collaborative NYT piece thought the film is about romance. Maybe. But I think romance is a byproduct of something else – Phil coming to terms with his personality. To me, the closest fictional metaphor is Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol. As Ebenezer Scrooge must go through several dreamlike states to resolve his own nastiness so does Phil Connors, through a seemingly endless repetition of one day. After all, every morning he wakes at 6 am to Sonny & Cher’s I’ve Got You Babe. The day is repeated exactly as the one before though Phil eventually becomes wise to its quotidian moments, incrementally making adjustments to avoid mishaps or in fact manipulate the future. And like Scrooge he has to reconcile his orneriness and bleak view of humanity; only then is the spell broken. The other splendid thing about seeing the movie oh-these-many-years-later is watching Andie MacDowell, who hasn’t starred in many films since. Her intelligent charming smile yet no nonsense personality is the perfect foil for the irascible Phil. It’s a shame we haven’t seen her more often.