Phil’s Self-Improvement Journey in Groundhog Day (1993)
“The wretch, concentrated all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.”— “Breathes There the Man”, Sir Walter Scott, The Lay of the Last Minstrel
One Tiny Problem
Groundhog Day is the seminal time-loop movie. It is the intellectual father (and sometimes grandfather) of some of my favorite films: Edge of Tomorrow (2014), Source Code (2011), and Palm Springs (2020).
An unquestionably beloved classic comedy.
As for me, I have watched it all but three times. The last two were only to try to figure out whether it’s really as good as people say.
Aside from the well-deserved accolades aforementioned, the movie is commonly considered a masterpiece of the personal psycho-spiritual journey of growth. You can no doubt find endless articles, blogs, threads, and even books expanding on that notion ad nauseam.
What they all have in common is that their theses rely on Phil’s experiences and actions within the time loop, fundamentally changing his character.
But did he actually change?
The film certainly wants you to believe he did. But was the groundwork done to warrant the audience accepting such a fundamental and drastic change?
The Shortest Possible Plot Synopsis
Phil Connors is arrogant, disgruntled, and overall unpleasant; the archetypical cynic, who resides in each one of us. He is a second-rate cable weatherman who mysteriously gets stuck in an infinite time loop while covering an assignment he despises in a small town he loathes in the dead of winter. The weather binds him to the town in perpetuity as the roads have been shut down due to the storm he has failed to predict.
Two people have accompanied him on his assignment, his cameraman (insignificant to the plot) and his producer Rita (Andy McDowell), the obligatory romantic interest.
Hilarity ensues. And some suicides.
In the end, he gets the girl. Well, rather, she gets him. She rents him at an auction. But it’s for a good cause. Probably.
New Age Fairytale
Its broad appeal and standing the test of time notwithstanding, Groundhog Day is also a product of a time in which New Age as a mainstream cultural phenomenon was at its peak. Storywise it is a New Age fairytale (or parable).
It is set in the world of slapstick and caricature, with light touches of subverted romantic (and a little bit of dark) comedy, but it is essentially the story of the evil witch becoming a prince for his own sake.
Once he can let go of trying to conquer the princess’s heart, he will win her over. And then they will rent a castle in the sleepy kingdom of Punxsutawney and live happily for the next couple of minutes. Cue credits.
Self-Improvement?
“Self-improvement is masturbation. Now, self-destruction…”
— Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt), Fight Club (1999)
Nihilism aside, the reason it is called self-improvement is because it focuses solely on oneself. Not to say that’s inherently a bad thing. Certainly, if anyone is responsible for our own “improvement” it would be us. It could very easily, however, become self-indulgent and come at the expense of responsibilities we have for others.
Now one could say Phil doesn’t have responsibility for others since he clearly has no one in his life. Otherwise, he would at least be concerned about never being able to see them again, and possibly even pick up the phone. But that’s not much of a defense of his character.
So let’s explore his bidding interest in the arts, shall we?
In order to learn to play the piano, he bribes the teacher to kick out a child from her class. Now the girl could hate the lessons, thus it could be viewed as a good deed. But that is neither implied nor is it alluded to Phil giving any… whatsoever about the kid.
All that is to say that self-improvement can come at a cost. There are only trade-offs. Or do we think the second time Phil comes for a lesson, he calls in advance and takes another slot??
And as it goes for Phil’s goal actually being self-improvement, need I remind you that when he harangues Rita for her ideal man attributes, one of them is he must play an instrument (just what every girl really wants, right)?
Self-improvement is neither wrong nor insignificant, and it can be an incredibly empowering act when it counters a sense of being trapped. And I’m sure it has changed people. Perhaps even fundamentally. I just don’t believe it changed Phil very much.
I have made my prediction.
Now let the groundhog make his.
And I hope he’s more careful crossing the road than his siblings.
February 3, a Changed Man?
Now to the meat and potatoes of Phil’s magnificent transformation.
A simplistic theory is that Phil hasn’t changed. He has tried endless variants of February 2 and landed on the one that works best for him. And then plays with it for variety when he gets bored.
But I contend that it doesn’t matter. First, because I don’t believe anyone, given infinite opportunity, would choose to do the best-est, right-est thing every single time. Again, in a fairytale perhaps. But the film painstakingly shows us countless iterations in which that isn’t the path Phil follows.
Of course, you say, but you have to give him time to grow. Sure. But what if he spent 80% of his time in the loop being an arse and 20% doing “good”. Where does that place him in the realm of spiritual progress? How about 99% to 1%?
How dare I put numbers on spiritual matters, you say? Okay, how would you compare giving money to someone (which he does) vs. kicking a puppy (which he probably does right after breakfast for the first 6,000 years)?
Or here’s another way to look at it; how do you assess between punching an annoying person in the face (especially considering you’re no barrel of monkeys yourself), endangering strangers with reckless drunk driving, stealing money, and abducting/endangering/murdering an animal compare with saving some people from a nasty experience, changing a tire for someone, or really trying to save an old homeless man’s life.
Or maybe there should just be room for forgiveness?
But that is the less nuanced point here.
My main hypothesis is that Phil may or may not have changed within the time loop, but it tells us nothing about who he is on the morning of February 3. He wakes up with Rita, declares they’re going to rent a house in Punxsutawney, and then the movie ends.
Now informing a person you’ve been with for a couple of hours, where and with whom they are going to live, does not sound like a man changed. Unless you’re counting deterioration. At first, he at least just didn’t give a shit and left people alone after a snide remark. Now he’s enforcing life decisions on a woman he’s only had one date with! (From her perspective, at least.) Do I need to give examples from history when people decide where others are going to live??
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Phil certainly breaks the mold of his archetype on several occurrences throughout the loop. And I think that’s great (you know, if we’re talking about a real person). He for sure ends up doing some good and being kind to some people, and I don’t want to diminish that.
Saving a kid from falling, a restaurant patron from choking, helping old ladies with their car. Hell, he even puts pressure on a woman who’s having second thoughts about getting married to go through with it. Which is great, because a person who reconsiders a big life decision should always be nudged to ignore their doubts by a complete stranger.
What I’m getting at is that the movie’s moral attitude when it wants to make the audience think Phil is becoming a better person, is, at the very least, sending mixed messages it is unaware it is sending.
Since Phil was a caricature of a curmudgeon and not a nuanced character, I still question who he is the day after the time loop is broken. He spent all those decades (presumably) being a nasty person. Where would that go? Into the trash pit of personality, where we discard all our fundamental traits and defenses because we’ve discovered something more pleasant, that receives better feedback? I don’t think so.
Maybe in a fairytale universe, maybe in a cartoon, but in a world not so different than our own, the transformation is just unserious. Could it happen, considering infinity, like a room full of monkeys typing Shakespeare? I don’t know.
A character’s shift from negative personality to positive throughout a narrative arc is as old as Ebenezer Scrooge. And many characters in time loop movies positively progress in their understanding of their actions and how they affect their relationships, and subsequently change their behaviors.
But it can only work within a story if it is earned. Phil doesn’t change because he sees how he affects others, and it upsets him, and he therefore uses his second (or fifth chance) to act differently.
He does things differently because he is tired of repeating his actions again and again. He does things differently for variety, as he does most of the film, regardless of anything but his own boredom
He does things differently because he keeps waking up miserable. Which isn’t unintelligent. How joyful would our life be if we changed the way we do things, because we woke up miserable because of our actions and attitudes the previous day?
Again, that is a good fairytale. This isn’t condescending! But ask yourself, when have I actually done it? And then ask yourself, has it created a pattern? Did I keep doing it so much, it has fundamentally changed me? Because if you think a valid excuse is not being stuck in a time loop, then you think you’re less free than Phil.
Imagine that when he shared his frustration with being stuck with Rita, she were to say, “Well, at least you’re freer than I am!”
He is certainly free in the sense that he can correct mistakes he regrets in a 24-hour period. But he can’t do anything outside the bounds of that timeline. He doesn’t try to affect anything outside the bounds of the town, though he can make phone calls, so he certainly does not take a fraction of the freedom he is given. My point is that it goes the same for all of us. How much freedom do we have to… do better, and how much do we apply ourselves to that end?
It is not that Phil’s good deeds aren’t good, and it’s not that performing them did not change him. Doing things that are outside his normal scope, and then doing them habitually, could certainly contribute to changing Phil’s neurology… a little.
But these new patterns of behavior, ones he has repeated perhaps infinite times, in Purgatory; in a space beyond time, beyond any daily chores or responsibilities. In essence, a place that doesn’t exist by February 3. And no matter how long infinity lasted within it, once it was over, it was nothing but a dream. Phil gets to keep whatever he has found there for exactly as long as he can and commits to keeping it up.
But now he does not have forever anymore, and as selfish as he is (yes, despite his good actions. We’ll get back to it), his commitment to self-actualization (again, entirely selfish), as impressive as it might be when he has the freedom to indulge in nothing else, won’t last.
Real life just has less choices and less opportunities. Not zero, not even few necessarily; but Phil’s opportunities were infinite. Every single thing he can do within the confines of 24 hours within the (albeit) small town is at his disposal. Anything. With infinite time to try and experiment and tweak and improve.
No one has that in the world he’s returning to. He may make it out on February 3 completely enlightened, but now comes the laundry. And the dishes, and the taxes. So who is Phill two or three days after the loop has ended? Is he Phil from February 1 or February 2? Perdiction?
It’s not even a question of whether Phil is strong enough to keep it up, there’s no reason to think he’d want to.
Why is he going back to Pittsburgh? What does he have there? I can understand wanting to take a vacation from Punxsutawney, but what’s wrong with the Carribeans? What is he, Captain America disguised as Waldo?
Why is he acting as if he and Rita have now been married for 50 years? Why the noncommittal attitude to living in Punxsutawney?
Phil’s actions are not only contingent on having infinite iterations of the day, which he will not have any longer; he also bore no cost for decisions or any tradeoffs in the loop, as all was reset at 6:00 AM, and he could make a different choice.
My point is, that there is no carryover, except for an increasingly fading memory of a dream. Once the loop has ended, Phil’s world becomes the real world again, where none of what makes him who he is has changed. The rest of the world wasn’t really there for his experience, which means to me, the only way to maintain a firm connection to who he was within it, is in a mental institution. And that does not make for a good happily ever.
Work Assignment
With all his venom towards the Groundhog Day work assignment and his disdain for the holiday, he returns to cover the event in multiple iterations. Now one could say that is the arc of his growth, from cynical coverage to romantic and endearing. Or that he does it for Rita, who’s producing the segment. Or for the people of the town. But why would anyone (who is not doing the most important job in the world) go to work if they have total freedom not to, no reason to do it, and not even have weekends off anymore?
He states that he’d prefer a root canal to covering Punxatawney’s Groundhog Day event. Sure, Rita will be disappointed and nervous about her job, but the movie never really establishes he cares about her. Sorry to burst that bubble, but prove me wrong. You could literally find nothing less important for him to do (except maybe when he watches Jeopardy. And I like Jeopardy.
Relationship with the People of Punxsutawney?
It’s not as if he imposes moving to Punxatawney on Rita with the stated reason he has so many friends and relationships to maintain in the town. It just shows us he used to look down on it, and now he has fallen for us charms. He just needs a little vacation in Pittsburgh.
Now we don’t know if he shares with this “version” of Rita everything that transpired, to maybe illustrate the necessity of staying in a relationship with the town he despised up until a few hours ago. One can assume there’s plenty he would want to keep to himself, as honesty is not going to save his budding relationship of a few hours, considering everything he’s done in relation to Rita in the days leading up to February 2. But more than that, all the relationships he supposedly has in town are also a only few hours old. For them as much as for Rita, February 3 came only 24 hours after February 2.
Rita and Phil’s Chemistry, the Weakest Link
You can’t have Groundhog Day without Bill Murray. And I’ve got nothing against Andy McDowell, but her performance is hardly iconic. (And, I’m sorry, but nobody actually always toasts to world peace). I just don’t think the two have chemistry. And I mean chemistry as acting partners, not romantic interest. That I don’t think there’s any of whatsoever.
A lot could be in the writing, as many of Rita’s responses to Phil’s more tamed advances are ridiculously forgiving. And to be fair to McDowell, I do think they have good chemistry at the end. You know, when she purchases him.
Phil doesn’t pursue Rita at first, though he does perform his obnoxious and cynical routine flirtation. But that seems more like an automatic response to a not completely unattractive female more than anything else.
After sensing he is experiencing the same day, and is riddled with angst, he actually relies on her for help, as she is the person he knows best (which is to say, very little). But he suspects she is kind, and considering how he is incapable of being pleasant to anyone, and she is at least willing to abide his presence, she is his best choice.
She shuts him down. So he goes drinking with strangers.
But soon he begins using his “magical” powers to seduce the other women in the town, and our first clue of his interest is blurred out as he whispers her name to another woman.
Critics and analysts (whatever the difference may be) interpret all this as Phil’s hedonistic pursuit phase, which is fair enough. But the film also elitestly exploits these (barely) characters of reasonably attractive females to demonstrate how Rita is so much superior to them because she is “cultured” or something.
We’ve already established Phil cares about Rita being kind, mostly because he doesn’t experience much of that from anyone for very long, due to his attitude and behavior. But as he cares so little about anything (except cappuccino) that hardly provides us with motivation for his relentless efforts for the next 20,000 years to conquer Rita, or even secure her affection. He doesn’t even seem motivated by the challenge. It’s just a thing he does. A lot. And it doesn’t go well for him. And he demonstratively has other options. And she really isn’t that impressive a specimen, though the film wants you to think she is, so maybe it’s the writer’s fantasy (though, to be fair, recite some good poetry at me, and see what happens).
Understandably, Rita is utilized to establish his manipulation phase, but it still requires character motivation. And from Rita’s perspective (though I have never been a woman to the best of my knowledge), I find it hard to believe most women would find someone else attractive just for telling them they like the same things. Men are quite easier.
The written character of Rita, however, does slowly fall for it, more and more. Again, for no reason.
But once he finally manages to create her “perfect day”, he decides to turn on the rapey vibes (though he does offer ice cream, so I guess it’s better). Now I can sympathize with the desperation, as he only has that one night in existence, but seriously…
The film never explains why it’s so important for him to have Rita, as it isn’t as if he always gets what he wants in general. At all. It doesn’t even seem like he’s motivated to pursue much of anything in his life. And barring the final iteration, I don’t see any attraction on her part. So I guess Rita is her most authentic self when she is attracted to someone; and we know she is because she buys them. (I know, I know, rents. Fine).
Point is, Groundhog Day could have played much better with the romantic comedy aspect of the story by parodying the genre or subverting it in creative ways, but that’s just not its strong suit. And that is a shame. Either way, the characters must have a reason to want each other; and barring Rita assenting Phil in the final iteration of February 2 on the basis of how other people react to him very positively, and then, you know, pulls out her wallet, we don’t get enough to establish real attraction.
And to be absolutely fair, Phil does love imposing renting apartments on other people, and Rita loves renting men; so I guess they did discover they had something in common after all in the end.
Deja Vu All Over Again
Giving Phil an exaggerated, rotten personality at the beginning of the film is a good way to contrast the alleged growth he attains by the story’s closure. But it’s also unrealistic, even within the world of the movie. I consider that a failure of worldbuilding, character, and story. It sounds excessively harsh, I know. But a lot of the film falls apart for me because of those choices.
The movie still has good bones and good comedy. The premise is great. But it correlates to the lamer aspects of new age culture. 1992 was a different time. And who doesn’t love excuses, if they align with your sentiments, that is.
Groundhog Day has cemented an enduring legacy and its imprint on culture, beyond pop culture, is uniquely significant. There is much to appreciate about it for sure, but I think I’m going to have other plans for the next several February 2s.
