How many Groundhog Days in the movie?

Cafe Society
41

Interesting Jpeg Jones, very interesting.

But this brings us back to the “trapped in the town” thing again. Hehe. If he couldn’t get out of town each day, he would be forced to face the consequences of his “perverted” actions. We see a couple of examples of this in the movie. Spending each and every day, for however many years, running from the cops and/or sitting in jail is not the best way to spend your time, especially when time is infinite as far as you are concerned.

Now I suppose one could argue that with his complete mastery of the town and the actions of it’s inhabitants, he could become a “Super Serial Killer” or something. He knows where everyone is and what everyone is doing. He could probably kill, or do some other extreme deviant behaviors, in isolation without any real fear of being “stressed” because of what he just did. If he planned it right, he could make sure the body was never found before the end of the day; No stressor, no consequences…

[blink]

You know Jpeg Jones, come to think of it, you may be on to something there. :wink:

Whoa, this movie is “deep” on so many levels.

Heh

42

Now here is a clincher

Could Phil in fact be in a sort of Limbo or Purgetory where he is forced to his day over and over until one of two things, Heaven and advancing on or Hell and utter madness.

He almost loses to ‘hell’ a couple of times and tries to kill himself to just make it stop but is unable too.

Personally, IMHO living a day over and over is almost a special circle of Hell. Monotony scares me (even had a nightmare about it)

43

Sorry me and Mrs Bitties had a long discussion over the impacts of the movie itself on the human psyche. One of our main ones was ‘would Phil conclude that there was a higher power’ due to this kind of miracle or curse?’

Its a grand movie, and is a lot deeper than some people imagine.

44

man i could think of so many things to do…

45

Two thoughts on his humanity:

  1. Maybe he DID go through a homicidal phase in an off camera moment. The fact that hedoesn’t fear his own death suggests that he knows that no matter what, everyone’s coming back.

  2. Maybe there was that nagging feeling of not wanting to do anything TOO horrible for fear that THIS TIME it would be the day that led to Feb 3. Do you think eventually he got over this fear because he couldn’t POSSIBLY believe it would? The attempts of suicide suggest otherwise.

GREAT THREAD!

46

Maybe he did the homicidal insanity bit, and then got over it. Like, emerged on the other side.

I mean, there’s only so many times you can murder a whole town, right? He probably had months of killing every single person in town by 7am and then for the rest of the day using their bodies to act out his own version of Much Ado About Nothing, but I imagine it’d get old after a while.

Possibly, murder just got boring?

47

It would have been great if they added some “murderous rampage” scenes into the Special Edition DVD. Just a couple quick, non-gory, killings to fit in with the tight pacing of the movie.

It would have been hilarious to see that “Watch your step, it’s a doozey (sp?)” guy get off-ed.

“Phil? Phil, is that you?” BAM! BAM! BAM! BAM!

LOL!

48

Yes, but Phil DOES have constant interaction with people, though admittedly bizarre in nature.

And suppose he did go insane? Over a long enough period, he could be cured. Recall the whole series of suicide attempts, which are arguably a phase of mental illness that he grew out of.

49

What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger! :slight_smile:

50

I imagine at some point the constant failure of anything new happening would complete whitewash a person’s personality. You’ve said everything, done everything, thought everything and there’s nothing new left to do. I mean at some point you become resigned to the fact that this is eternity for you and there’s no way out. I think the only way you can get by in this world after thousands of years is to become completely and utterly detached from the world around you. You might even begin settling into a groove where you do the exact same thing every day, in effect mimicing your surroundings. And with nothing new to shock you out of your repeating path this becomes, in a sense, your death. You’re no longer an actor but part of the background.

Phil’s low key humor at his “resurrection” makes me think he hasn’t been there for centuries. He’s been there a long time, he’s bored but not nearly to the point of giving up. Rather I think he was still on the upslope of knowledge to be gained within this day he’d been alotted.

Probably the day before his final day he was still exploring certain avenues of the town and figuring out new areas. But his knowledge about the town was vast enough that he felt he could create a perfect day and so he planned it out the night before. A day in which he acted in ways which were only positive and made people feel good. Like the piano teacher. How would she know know that he was her student unless he went and saw her that day, something he clearly no longer needed to do?

I think 10,000 days, a little over 27 years, is the right amount of time.

51

I read the first part of this thread not realizing at first that it had been bumped after a year or so. I thought to myself, “wasn’t there already a thread about this?” LOL

Haj

52

I can’t imagine it being ten thousand years. In that time he would undoubtably be the most knowledgeable person in the history of time. He’d notice patterns in nature and human conciousness; he’d gain an ultimate understanding of many concepts, a level of understanding which no one has come close to at the present time. He’d be the greatest pianist ever, hell if he devoted only one lifetime (70-100 years) soley to piano, he’d surpass any pianist ever, and he’d be creating arrangements which blow Mozart and Beethoven clear out of the water. Devoting thousands upon millions of hours to playing and listening to piano would have him reach a level of expertise so advanced it has never been witnessed.

I couldn’t imagine the movie being longer than 20 years. I’d say it was about 10.

53

Yeah, the fact that he’s maintained any sort of sanity clearly shows it to be a relatively short amount of time, I think.

54

I respectfully disagree at this point.

Since he is reliving the same day in the same little town, his resources for obtaining knowledge are probably pretty limited. He wouldn’t get much farther than learning the town library by heart, which I guess would bring him up to the level of the Encyclopedia Brittanica. He wouldn’t have much knowledge of cutting-edge research.

Furthermore, with respect to music skills, time is only one part of getting good. I don’t think people can rise much above their talent; to become a world-class pianist you should be particularly gifted.

For the rest, I’m with the rest of you in saying he wouldn’t be stuck for more than a number of years. His remark when throwing cards in the hat reveals something like that.

I did find the sequence of events of Groundhog day, which only lists the visible ones and adds up to 34 days only (thanks to IMDB).

55

Great thread, thanks for resurrecting it! I love Groundhog Day - my favourite movies (and books) are always those that appear light and fun on the surface, but are actually quite profound.

I always thought the main factor in his redemption was that he helped those people even though, as far as he knew, his actions would have no lasting effects and he would have to do them all again the next day. He might get the thanks and respect of all the people that he later saw at the ball, but by the next day they would be strangers to him again. He had nothing personally to gain from helping them, but he did it anyway.

What would have stopped him from being a serial killer? Well, as someone else asked, what’s happening may have led to him to start believing in some higher power. He would have had better reason than most to believe that hell exists. Or perhaps he tried hurting people and found it gave him no pleasure (except for punching Ned Ryerson out, that certainly gave the viewers pleasure!) He ended up being rather saintly; perhaps it wasn’t in his nature to be a murderer.

I disagree about Phil possibly ending up as some musical genius or even having encyclopaedic knowledge no matter how much time he had. Seems to me that, even with infinite time, there are limits to what the human brain can learn. Like someone else said, he couldn’t take notes. It all had to go in his own fallible brain. Haven’t you ever noticed how when you learn new things, some of the old things you knew become harder to remember?

Plus there’s the time factor. For him, years did pass, and over time we forget things. I used to be able to speak Slovak but only remember a few words now. Phil had a lot of time to forget things as well as remember them.

The ‘doctor’ comments could have been an honorary title, or he pretended to be a doctor, or perhaps before groundhog day he really did have a doctorate in a non-medical field. He obviously cannot have used Groundhog Day to go to medical school, unless there are med schools in small town USA that let you enrol and graduate on the same day.

One last thought … after all this time of having to pretend that was his first lesson ever (for example), he must have ended up a really skillful liar. His sense of what is ‘real’ must have become totally distorted. For him it is just as true to say that the boy fell out of the tree as to say that boy did not fall out of the tree.

Now this really is the last thought. His conversation with the drunks in the bar, in which he says something like ‘do you ever feel like you’re just repeating the same day over and over’ and they they know exactly what he’s talking about, despite not actually living in a time-loop, indicates that Phil’s experiences are applicable to more than just his special case. We could all use our own finite time to help others and learn new things.

Well, that was what I took away from the movie anyway…

56

To answer the original question, I think he would have been there about twenty years (the time it usually takes to ‘grow up’).

57

I have no idea how long he was stuck there, but I think it’s an interesting question. It’s a great movie. I love it, and I could watch it over and over again. ::smirk::

Okay, sorry.

I really just popped in to say that Xena: Warrior Princess did a tribute show on Groundhog Day that was one of their funniest of the whole series. It’s called “Been There, Done That.”

Basically, she is trapped in a feuding little town trying to figure out why the same day keeps happening again and again, but only for her. Check it out if you get a chance- really funny, and a great tip of the hat to Groundhog Day.

58

Warning. Complete and utter spoilers.
I just rewatched the movie and …

I know it’s been several years since this point was made but he never sees the chart. He asks to see it but he never finds it to look at it. Or at least we never see it in the movie.

My Timeline

A few days to figure out what’s going on followed by first plot to bed Nancy.

Later he’s at the movies with yet another girl and says he’s seen Heidi II over 100 times. This must be about a year in. A day or two to set up a girl then maybe repeat the good day a few times.

Shortly thereafter he turns his attention to Rita. Weeks perfecting the day to get as close as was possible when he was a jerk followed by at least a week of getting slapped as he keeps screwing it up in more and more desperate attempts to bed her.

He gives up and spends about many months doing nothing but learning how to toss cards into a hat and other various things around town like learning at least a little bit about everyone in town. Let’s say he does this for 9 months. He just gets so bored he talks with every single person in town.

He loses it and kills himself for the first time. Kills himself many more times before giving up and he now believes himself to be a god. Maybe a month.

He spends day with Rita after getting her to consider that he may be reliving the same day over and over. She restores his optimism.

He learns how to ice sculpt. He begins to learn how to play the piano. He tries many times to save the old man, learns he can’t do everything. Years pass.

Last day and he’s the superman of the town. Catching falling children, saving choking victims, all the little things he can do to make peoples lives better. Rita sees him playing the piano and Ramis remarks on the commentary that at this point he figures he’s been there for about 10 years. Somebody asked for the source.

I don’t know. I guess it could be 10 years but I’d still say it was more.

P.S. I’d like to see other cultures make their version of this movie. Particularly French, Japanese and British.

59

Yeah, so I started this thread back in 2001, but I just watched the movie again, and I wanted to start a thread about whether there is a moral to the story. I was searching to see if the idea had been covered recently, and this thread popped up. It looks like it was resurrected two more times in 2003, and people seemed to like it so… WTF

So my new question for discussion is, is there a moral to the story? If the idea is that he has to have a “perfect” day, how could he? Doesn’t he need to rob the armored car every day to finance himself? If he saves the kid falling out of the tree, might he not be able to save an old lady from being hit by a car at the same time somewhere else? And he never could save the old homeless guy.

Plus he had, almost from the start, what amounted to an unhealthy obsession with Rita, and never did get over it. When you think about it, they were completely unsuited for each other. Yet he spends god knows how much time basically polishing up an act to score with her. And since he has a virtual eternity to work on it, it’s like shooting fish in a barrel. Yes, I know he didn’t score with her, but you know he did the day after Groundhog Day. :stuck_out_tongue:

Some thoughts about some of the older posts in the thread:

Getting out of Punxatawny(sp?) – I think he actually DID get out, but was stuck on the highway. The trooper said he could go back to town or go ahead and freeze. I’m in agreement with this:

More thoughts about the time frame – me, I would have spent a lot of nights screwing Nancy, and the other chick in the maid outfit, just to figure out how kinky I they could get. And the with every attractive woman in town – invest a lot of nights, if necessary, in figuring out how to get them into bed; and a lot more to experiment once I had them there.

The piano playing? He might have got a few or a few dozen lessons, and then change his story to simply rent her piano for practice. But he probably would have still needed to rob the armored car to do that, so we’re back to the question of how a “perfect” day can include grand theft.

60

Man, I used to like this movie, but reading this thread has depressed me. Reliving the same day 35 times is funny. Reliving the same day 3,650 times (to match the ten-year minimum that seems to be the consensus) is completely depressing and insane.

I guess I never thought about how long it would take. I’m a lousy judge of piano competence and have no idea how long it would take to reach his level of proficiency.

Anyway, as to a moral . . . I see it as a metaphor that we should explore in our own lives. None of us literally live the same day over and over, but many of us (especially in middle age) feel like we are doing so. How should we react to this? The movie explores several ways, and suggests one as the best way–that we should use our familiarity with our daily routine to our advantage, and perfect things as much as we can.