the groundhog day project

Phil’s thing, before the loop, during the loop, after the loop, is that he is attentive. On Day 2, he recognizes the banter on the radio from the day before, for example. But, even before that, he has already been paying attention. Watch Rita in front of the bluescreen, arms up, jazz hands opening and closing. What does Phil do when he steps in front of that moving truck so many days later? Arms up, jazz hands opening and closing. For whatever reason (in that instance) he’s mimicking Rita’s movements from that day she changed him (according to him). By the way, in case there’s confusion, I don’t think it’s the radio banter that convinces him the day is repeating on that second morning; instead it’s when he looks around the room and sees his stuff in the same position not as the night before (from his perspective) but from the night previous to that one. Phil puts thought into the things he says, the things he does. When he gets out of the van and sees the Pennsylvanian Hotel on Febru...

Before I get into today’s thing, I must say that it was worth a shot. But, my mention of this blog on the film’s Wikipedia page has been removed—my blog, when it must be its own citation, is trivial and irrelevant. Gotta work on that. Meanwhile, it occurred to me that I need to compile a list of the goofs I have discovered in the movie to add to the IMDb page once it updates with the changes I made yesterday. But, neither of those things are what I want to talk about today. Nor do I want to talk about how The Groundhog Day Project ’s Twitter got a retweet from a guy with nearly 10,000 followers last night and today The Groundhog Day Project has gotten more pageviews in a single day than ever before. No, today I want to talk about Jeopardy! In the middle of Phil’s depression, he plays along with the show. It’s a part of the movie that should be memorable. Phil Connors hanging out with the mostly old crowd at the Cherry Street Inn. The episode of Jeopardy! that we see is ...

Not too long ago I wrote about Groundhog Day as a religious film . That is to say, I discussed how folks of different religions see the film as exemplifying their specific belief systems. And, notably, when I cited Michael P. Foley's "Phil's Shadow" , I dismissed almost out of hand his suggestion that when Phil looks up after O'Reilly dies in the alley, he is looking to God. Specifically, what Foley says is this: But Phil’s conviction evaporates once he is forced to acknowledge the inevitable death of an old beggar whose life he repeatedly tries to save. In the final scene of this subplot, he is kneeling down, vainly administering CPR to the man, when he stops and plaintively looks heavenward. And in an unrelated moment, he indirectly acknowledges God as Creator by reciting the verse, “Only God can make a tree.” God alone, Phil learns, is the Lord of life and death. Now, I think it's presumptuous to link the mention of Joyce Kilmer's "Trees" ...

Recently, I made the argument that a) there is no inherent meaning in things and b) we make meaning by finding/manufacturing it. And, obviously, I’ve found plenty of (and presumably manufactured some) meaning in Groundhog Day or this project would have already been done and lamentably forgotten. And, plenty of people have found not only meaning but personal meaning in the film. And, by personal meaning, I mean they don’t see it as some obvious screed with its own message but a message befitting of their own personal beliefs. In fact, the film was featured in the Museum of Modern Art’s film series “The Hidden God: Film and Faith” back in 2003. Alex Kuczynski wrote in The New York Times : …the film “has become a curious favorite of religious leaders of many faiths, who all see in “Groundhog Day” a reflection of their own spiritual messages. Curators of the series, polling some 35 critics in the literary, religious and film worlds to suggest films with religious interpretations, found ...