Groundhog Day Movie: A philosophical perspective

Warning: Spoiler alert

Alternate title for this movie: The journey to being selfless

The Premise

Phil Connors is an ordinary weather reporter in Pittsburgh. He is smart and intelligent and quite good at his work. The only problem is that he is self-centered and in general does not care about people around him. He was sent to a nearby town of Punxstawney to cover the yearly celebration of groundhog day festival which occurs on Feb 2 of every year. He goes to this place with two more of his colleagues; Larry the cameraman and Rita, her news report producer.

Phil has been doing this Groundhog festival report for more than six years and has no interest in this people, his job, the festival or even the people around in the town. He just wants to finish the job and leave the town to back home as soon as he is done. Everything went as the news report team planned but the due to a heavy snow storm in the night, their team was stuck in the town and had to stay overnight and Phil also stayed in his same hotel overnight. The next day he gets up, he finds that its Feb 2nd again, and the same day and all the events from past day happened exactly the same way. The same day repeats again and again and its Feb 2 every morning he gets up from bed. To Phil it appears as if he is stuck in a time trap and also the town because he cannot leave the town due to a heavy snow storm in the evening.

4 Phases of his life

Phil’s character goes through a lot of phases while he is stuck in the time and this town here.

Phase 1: Resistance

He gets frustrated living the same day infinitely. He tried to call out of town but the phone lines were down due to the heavy storm. He tried explaining this situation to his colleagues who would not believe him or even if they believed him, everything would reset the next day and their friends would forget about Phil’s problem. To make his problem even worse, he meets doctors and psychiatrists who found no problem with Phil and mentioned that he is perfectly normal.

Phase 2: The immortal god

Since Phil’s world technically resets back to Feb 2 every day, he tries taking advantage of his world for shear pleasure. He tries to break traffic rules, rob money from vans, ruins ruins the groundhog festival in many ways and also tries to take advantage of people around him by cheating them. But soon he get bored of repeating the same thing again and again and realizes that the cheap pleasure he is looking for is not what will bring him happiness in the long term. He was trying to harm the society and was indirectly feeling the harm himself. Or in the words of Marcus Aurelius , one of the big names in the Stoic philosophy, “What hurts the hive, also hurts the bee”.

Phase 3: Escape

having tried all the pleasure tactics, he finds no meaning in life and finally decides to kill himself. He tried jumping over tall buildings, driving car over a cliff, electrocuting himself and would reach hospital dead. But the next day at 6 am in the morning, he finds himself back in his hotel without a scratch as if nothing every happened to him on the previous day.

Phase 4: Surrendering his ego

Having being frustrated that all his actions could not bring any change in his life. He slowly started seeing his life less about his self and his ego; but rather about society. He makes a decision that one day to make a good use of his superpower; wherein he can predict everything in town so well since he experience the same thing everyday. He tries to make lives of other people better in every way he could.

He treats people with respect, which he has never been doing all his life. He greets everyone he knows and passes by them and even treats his colleague well. He tries his level best to give the the most compelling new report for the groundhog festival. He also learns to play piano and ice sculpting to add to the celebration of the groundhog festival.

From a philosophical point of view of Stoics or Mark Mason, instead of being a victim to his world, he instead gave a shot at taking responsibility for his own happiness. Even as Viktor Frankl’s philosophy (the author of man’s search for meaning), he tried to find meaning in life by devoting his eternity by being selfless.

He soon realizes that when he treats people well and he is also being treated well and he became one of the most popular persons in the town. He always like Rita, the new producer, but had never been nice to her. As he became more and more less self-centered Rita also fell in love with him, ,something he would not even have imagined. The next day he gets up he realizes that its Feb 3 and he finally broke and came out of the the time trap.

The underlying life philosophies

Phil, the main character touched upon many diverse sets of philosophies I have come across.

• He demonstrated that our happiness is determined by our own actions and is not determined by what others do to you. He transitioned from having a victim mentality to being responsible. (Marcus Aurelius, and Viktor Frankl)
• He found a meaning of his life only by dissolving his ego and being selfless. He realized that the life is not worth living if he is living only for himself but much more worth if he lived for people he cared for. He realized that benefit of of society supercedes his individual benefits (Marcus Aurelius, and Viktor Frankl)
• He also demonstrated that happiness is not something we strive for, but it comes to you as a by product when you find a goal worth fighting for and working towards it everyday. (Viktor Frankl)
• Also, he demonstrated that the world is nothing but a mirror of our own personality. Treat people bad and you will be treated bad. Treat them nicely and you will be treated nicely. This is Karma of social life in action. (Dale Carnegie)

Final conclusion

This movie packs a punch with a lot of life lessons to learn and everyone should watch this movie at least once in their life.

References:

Aurelius, Marcus. Marcus Aurelius: Meditations, Books 1-6. Oxford University Press, 2013.
Carnegie, Dale. How to win friends & influence people. e-artnow, 2017.
Frankl, V. E. (1985). Man’s search for meaning. Simon and Schuster.