Hi. I'm Matt. And this is Logos Made Flesh.
Once a year, the eyes of the nation turn to this tiny hamlet in western Pennsylvania to watch a master at work.
The master? Punxsutawney Phil, the worlds most famous weatherman.
The first sign that Groundhog Day is saying more than the ordinary comedy is found in its not-so-subtle identification of Phil, the man, with the Groundhog.
Phil? Like the Groundhog Phil?
Yea. Like the Groundhog.
A big sign over the den highlights the comparison.
Like Phil, the Groundhog is a weatherman - forecasting the continuation or end to winter.
Twice, Phil even acts like the Groundhog.
And as we will see in a minute, in killing the Groundhog, Phil also kills himself.
More significantly, though, the time loop for which the film is famous, is just as symbolic.
Phil's waking up each morning to the same alarm mirrors the redundant days of our lives.
What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing that you did mattered?
Think about it. That's the question the film wants us to ask ourselves.
Who hasn't felt like they were stuck in a life that goes on and on without fulfillment?
Life's absurd redundancy is also expressed in the ancient myth of Sisyphus, who was condemned to eternally push a boulder up a hill only to have it roll down again.
Like Sisyphus and now Phil, we struggle for a significance that persistently goes unfulfilled.
So what do we do? The easy answer is to live free and independent. Seek fulfillment in any way we can.
If there's no ultimate consequence - no true value in our actions - then define meaning for yourself.
And so, Phil, waking up to that fact that he's immune from judgment, indulges himself.
He punches an annoying salesman
stuffs himself with junk food
robs a bank
manipulates a woman for sex
Nancy.
Whatever.
But the life lived free of consequence still bars us from satisfaction.
Ignoring our longing for fulfillment doesn't release us from it.
Phil once again smashes into the walls of his prison in his failed quest for Rita.
Music: “I can’t get no…I can’t get no…”
This leads him to the inevitable darker solution. Self-destruction.
If life is so painfully fruitless, why endure the struggle?
So Phil, In a highly symbolic act, attempts to stop the groundhog from seeing its shadow.
He kidnaps it and, in perhaps an allusion to Sisyphus, finds himself caught between a quarry and a cliff; a literal rock and a hard place.
There, Phil drives off the cliff, killing himself and the groundhog as well.
But even in this, he finds no fulfillment. He’s resurrected the next morning to relive the same day over again.
And yet Phil senses he must die.
Surprisingly, Phil has arrived at a sensible answer. Albert Camus, in his book the Myth of Sisyphus writes
There's a harsh truth in the inevitable pull.
But Groundhog Day points us to the real solution. And its hear that film reveals the heart of Phil's problem.
I’m a god.
You’re god?
I’m a god. I’m not the God. I don’t think.
Think about it. This isn’t simply a belief Phil derives from his repeatedly killing himself.
This is the faith Phil's had from the start.
Don’t you listen to the weather? We got a major storm here.
I make the weather!
And it's this hubris which has produced the pain he's found in his redundant loop.
But Phil, now experiencing the emptiness he's found in self-living, no longer wants to be a god.
In repeatedly killing himself, he's come to the end of self.
The most obvious indication of Phil's divine abdication comes in the reference to “Trees” by Joyce Kilmer.
I think the last thing you heard was “only God can make a tree."
Phil is now turning away from himself to another.
In truly loving Rita, no longer manipulating her, the gravity of Phil's universe shifts.
It's not a coincidence that Rita's name means “precious pearl." She is the “Pearl of Great Price” for which Phil relinquishes his very self.
Music: “I got you babe."
Phil wakes up the next morning a brand new man. Phil has Rita - the true significance of his alarm's repeated song.
Instead of controlling and taking, Phil now both receives and gives.
He gives all his money to a homeless man.
Greets people with a smile and a warm embrace
Reads books
Takes up piano and ice-sculpting
But there’s still a little of Phil's arrogance which has yet to die.
One night, he encounters a dying man. And given his god-like powers, he refuses to accept the inevitable.
Where’s the chart?
Sometimes people just die.
Not today.
He does everything in his power to save the man.
But as he performs CPR on the man one last time, and he hears the man's breath surrendered to God
so is he, in his look towards heaven.
It's here that Phil's cycle of days is broken. The last day Phil experiences in Punxsutawney is the way he was always met to live it - Free of self.
Phil began his days full and yet unfulfilled. On his last day, he's emptied and yet completely filled.
Phil's winter ends, like the Groundhog, when he no longer sees his shadow.
And we too, Only by abandoning ourselves to God and others, no longer looking to ourselves, will find and end to our cycle of empty and meaningless days.
I leave you with the words of G. K. Chesterton