It’s Groundhog Day Again

By Lori Perkins

That headline seems redundant, no?

I am preparing for my annual re-watch of the Bill Murray/Andie McDowell classic Groundhog Day, which I started rewatching annually seven years ago.  It seems like only yesterday…

One of the most amazing things about the movie, for me, is that every time I watch it I see something in it I never saw before.

The first time I rewatched it, I was shocked at how I never saw it as a romance.  It even has a Happy Ever After  (HEA) ending.  I just saw it as the charming but endless repeat of a life poorly lived until Bill Murray’s character, Phil Connors, got it right.

The next time I rewatched it I suddenly saw the philosophical element to it, and realized it was actually brilliant in its own way.  I was amazed at how Phil went through every conceivable way of ending his life and then came out on the positive end.  I had somehow completely erased the repeated suicide attempts from my memory.  I even did some research and found articles on how Groundhog Day is considered the ultimate Buddhist film, https://livinglifefearless.co/2019/features/scared-of-our-own-shadow-groundhog-day-is-a-sneaky-discourse-on-buddhism/

https://livinglifefearless.co/2019/features/scared-of-our-own-shadow-groundhog-day-is-a-sneaky-discourse-on-buddhism/.

Two years ago, I was appalled at the lack of consent between Phil and Rita’s “courtship,” because he basically steals her idea of a perfect man and then feeds it back to her.  She almost has no choice but to fall in love with him, but has he really changed or is this just a performance to get the girl?  Those thoughts actually kept me up at night.

Last year I thought the second term of Donald Trump would bring me a whole new meaning to the political de ja vu experience, but to my extreme horror this current administration’s policies has shown me that this is not Groundhog Day, The Remake, but Groundhog Day, The Sequel and you know sequels are always worse.  I am afraid we are living through the equivalent of Jaws: The Revenge.

So I will watch the movie again tonight, and I am pretty certain that this year I’ll see it in a whole new light.