Groundhog Day

Welcome to the Year of Wonders at Between The Stools alternative spiritual community. The wonders will never cease but are planned to be film based this year, starting on Imbolc/Candlemas (we remember both here).

It’s also Groundhog Day, whose origins are connected to the above Pagan/Christian festivals.

So I wish to bring a flavour of the coming year and our Lent season with a piece based on the 1993 film starring Bill Murray about a weathercaster covering an event who repeats the same day constantly.

I was appalled to learn that the Groundhog event is real!

My concern is not analysing that event nor the film, but seeking spiritual lessons.

Firstly, to pose a question: the groundhog’s winter prediction is predicated on whether he sees his shadow. (How can the top-hatted human keepers tell what this woodchuck can perceive?) But what does, in spiritual terms, seeing your shadow mean? What is it NOT to see that shadow? There are some spiritual and interpersonal development workers who focus on what they call shadow work. How might seeing this in ourselves affect our own winter? And is a longer winter necessarily bad?

Today I’m thinking of snowdrops – the first flowers of spring that flourish in the deepest coldest part of winter, reminding us that this too shall pass and the carpets of these flowers are a special joy (and possibly day out to view them).

I thought about the development of the film. I will say that it’s not the deepest or truest. It follows the trope of selfish nasty person changing. But Phil – the same name as the groundhog – has a point about the bizarre festivities he’s expected to visit and record. When accosted by an old acquaintance, we might sympathise. Ned Ryerson has personal space issues, he’s thrusting his immoral business onto a person who’s not seeking it, in public. His annoyance level is too high to feel believable, even in the tone of the film. We will come to the outcome with Ned later.

I wondered what we might make of the puddle that Phil starts by stepping into right after. How do we learn to see the puddles, or be prepared for them if they must come? (Eg, carry spare socks and a towel and a portable hot water bottle). What might puddles and preparations transcribe to in life?

Phil is prevented from leaving small Pennsylvanian town Punxsutawney due to a blizzard – which he as meteorologist had not foreseen. It’s as if forces greater than him are making him deal with something, giving him a life lesson that his soul wants but earthly self does not recognise.

Does anyone else wonder where this magical repeating day sequence comes from? Is it the blizzard, the cold shower, the groundhog…and how like Murray’s other role, Scrooged, this film is.

I wondered if Phil’s reaction to his groundhog predicament follows the stages of grief. There is disbelief and denial, feeling disequilibrium, some anger…and then Phil’s journey takes a different path. Phil decides that if he keeps waking up tomorrow with everything he did today erased, he can do what he likes without consequences. He takes others with him – that could have been a selfish risk, for no-one else seems to be affected by the groundhog day phenomenon.

Then he decides that the factor which must be eliminated is the semi-sacred titular rodent himself. He tries to destroy the squirrel-like star of the show – happily, due to the Groundhog magic, both live to see many more days. Realising that he will always emerge from his Thelma and Louise moment, Phil tries many ways to end his life. That also didn’t make sense: if he couldn’t ride into ravine and blow up with a car and stay dead, would anything else work? There was also a too-casual-a response to suicide, making it amusing, when it isn’t.

His eventual conclusion is that he’s a god. At least this delusion helps him turn from destruction.

Phil has also tried to manipulate, especially desirable women. He thinks that by asking things about them to magically know or share next time will make seduction easy.

He eventually takes the time to learn new skills, although these are also about impressing a woman – Andie MacDowell’s Rita.

This part of the story isn’t very worthy because it kind of works. All I can say that is positive is that his first night with her – when she wakes up with him in the morning – shows a shift to a different kind of relationship. He reads and chats and cuddles, rather than an immediate physical relationship with no thought for real connection or the other person that he had with other women. Is it Rita who therefore performs the reverse magic, ending the Groundhog curse (which needn’t be seen as such).

Phil’s answer to the saving spree in Superman The Movie shows a still quite shallow response to service. Like a TV show we’re likely to meet over Lent, I think that Phil is garnering points to escape his karmic prison rather than really doing good for its own sake.

His final reaction to Ned is to buy many insurance products. Ned doesn’t learn to behave better, nor is he asked to question his business. I didn’t feel there was anything meaningful in Ned and his interactions.

In fact, I felt the film (which I saw twice recently) to feel disjointed and shallow, ending in personal auctions and random acts of kindness which are literally that, and didn’t make me feel that Phil had really changed; it was about an ego trip as big as he ever had to begin with as ‘celebrity’ weatherman.

There were slow signs that as Phil accepted his repeating day that it not only improved, but that it was soon going to end. He chose kindness; he waxed lyrical, not cynical. He stopped ribbing the cameraman and was prepared to see him as a person.

However, I critique the notion that he became the person that the woman he liked was seeking. He was far from her definite list of qualities, and in many ways, faked them.

What drew me to the film was the notion of a spiritual epic embedded in mainstream romantic comedy. I didn’t really find that, but I did think: what can we learn and do when we seem to be stuck…in a place, with repeating situations. Can they actually be helping us grow, if we see them as a gift to embrace? Can we make challenging situations work for us?

When he was ready – by the filmmaker’s standards – Phil was released; Groundhog Day moved on, and it was at last February 3rd.

He also appeared not to age or lose out during this period, and I wonder if that can be a truth too – that if we feel held back that we will not have life pass us by; we will still get where we’re going.

I’ll be back soon with an introduction on how I see film

Our next service is at Easter but there’ll be posts in Lent (which starts on 14th Feb).