To me, ten years doesn’t seem enough time to even become a great piano player, let alone all the other stuff he learned.
My bank’s limit is $300 within a 24 hour period. I leaned that by trying to buy something that cost more, and then rather angrily going to the bank for an explanation. Ultimately I decided it was probably a reasonable means of protecting my balance in case the card and PIN number was compromised, so though I could have had the limit increased I didn’t.
I find it interesting that the term “Groundhog Day” has become a mainstream metaphor.
Ebert mentions this in Groundhog Day his review – when people describe an experience as like being in some particular movie, you know the movie has had a major impact.
Just rewatched it, inspired by this thread. What an awesome movie indeed.
Rita just got to know him “yesterday” (Or the day before, February 1, if you will), yet they already want to move to Punxsutawney. I believe this is him acknowledging (in a kind of tongue-in-cheek way) that it is a little weird for him to ask her to spend her life with him after one glorious and weird evening together.
My take on it, at least.
I recall when President Clinton hosted Palestinian-Israeli peace talks in the US – it must have been in 1998, because I believe I remember where I was in Nepal when I read this – and every day was ending in similar frustration, and someone remarked it was like Groundhog Day. Arafat didn’t understand the remark, and Clinton himself tried to explain it to him, and he just couldn’t understand what the hell he was talking about. He never did get it.
That’s kind of a return to what I said a ways upthread. He has all the time he wants to learn about her and what her hot buttons are. She’s a fish in a barrel. I think he understands that, and realizes that when she has sufficient time, she may not find his long-term persona as appealing as the whirlwind romance made him seem.
He doesn’t have to be limited to spending his ATM cash withdrawal limit. Presumably he has a credit card with a limit of several thousand dollars. He could pay for things like the concert tickets, food, etc on credit.
My friend claims that he read an interview with one of the authors and the number was 10,000 days.
However, I have no cite for it.
It says so in the Ebert review that ftg linked to. But that was an early draft. Originally, the story began with Phil already well into his stint in Punxsutawney, but ISTR that Harold Ramis persuaded Danny Rubin to change it, a change that he acknowledged was for the better.
Loved that show.
My wild ass guess at the time I saw the show with no real proof or deep thought…was about 30 years.
Not exactly persuaded, at least not at first. In the Special Features of our DVD, Ramis says he promised Rubin that he would never change that concept of starting right in the middle. It was the scene where Bill Murray counts down while walking over to rob the armored car. (Bank guard Herman was actually the film’s executive producer, CO “Doc” Erickson.) Then he decided it would play better in a straight linear style. Rubin said it ticked him off no end at first, but the decision was out of his hands. He later grew to accept it was the right decision.
Another aspect of Phil’s change and ultimate “redemption” is that he stops resisting the day and just starts enjoying it – enjoying it not in a selfish or hedonistic way (he tries that and learns that it doesn’t work), but by discovering that the only way to make the day bearable, to find any true bliss in it, is by being selfless. The only thing he finds that gets him through the day without a downside is helping other people. Once he has a day of doing that with absolutely no thought of any personal gain, he is saved.
At the beginning of the movie, Phil is cynical and detached. He is in the world, bit not of. He is arch, smug, superior. He sees other people as “them,” he does not see himself as part of an “us.” Once he loses that detachment, that sense of separation, that resistance to life and becomes sincerely, guilelessly part of the world and the “we.” That’s when he can finally start to “live” again. It’s all very Zen in how it becomes about transcending the ego, abandoning misguded, selfish desire and seeing that bliss comes from being ego-less, selfless, living fully in the present moment, etc.
I love the idea that this thread has been revived 3 times in 9 years, and the interest continues.
Remind me never to go to Punxatawney on Groundhog Day, or I will NEVER get out.
It’s like we’ve seen it before…
My own (not serious) pet theory: Phil is released from the time loop when he finally agrees to buy life insurance from Ned.
Yeah, good god, he might do something violent, nutty, and irrational like hognap Punxatawney Phil, steal a truck, and drive off a cliff with the hog in his lap. For that matter, we really don’t know that he never killed anyone; the movie simply isn’t dark enough to deal with the possibility.
I think it’s very reasonable to ascribe many of Murray’s behaviors in the movie to mental illness, especially the suicide attempts and the obsessive behavior with the homeless man. I think that after his serious depressive phase, he must have gained a Zen (or Tao? The passive acceptance of the inevitable seems Eastern to me) sensibility about the futility of escaping his prison and the understanding that the only progress he could make was within his own head.
I think that thirty years is the shortest possible time frame, based on the piano abilities and ice carving skills alone. Unless you’re a wunderkind, you really can’t learn to play the piano that well in less than fifteen years, and more like thirty for those of average innate talent. The only reason I allow a figure as low as thirty is that he has no real responsibilities anymore, and could probably work fifteen or twenty hours a day. He won’t even be sleepy the next morning. Realistically, considering that we probably only see a sample of the skills he’s learned, not to mention his omniscience of what’s going on in the town at any given moment, I think one hundred years is a better guess.
How functional would he be when he is no longer able to anticipate actions and events?
That’s a long time to be stuck in a replay loop.
On the other hand, I can totally envision a forgiving supreme being that understands the nature of humans. I mean, if you asked a room of guys what they would do if they could become invisible, the vast majority of them would say (or think), “Women’s locker room.” In the same way, the hedonistic self-absorbed stuff Phil does is the kind of thing someone would do when given the opportunity to restart their day as if they were reloading a saved video game.
But Phil can’t choose how to use this ‘superpower’. That nebulous supreme being has forcibly locked him into this cycle, and in doing so Phil winds up living out every hedonistic fantasy when it doesn’t count. He gets to live these things out without any lasting impact on the world around him. Eventually he gets the base desires all out of his system, and all that’s left is a a good man. This supreme being gave him the chance for ultimate physical satisfaction, and now that that’s been fulfilled, Phil starts seeking mental or even spiritual satisfaction.
Basically, the repeating days are a black box. The supreme being puts a jerkass into one end and out comes a wise, worldly, selfless human being. Whatever the jerkass did to stop being a jerkass is entirely the jerkass’s concern. All that matters is the person that comes out.
ETA: It cracks me up that this thread keeps popping back up. I remember when I first saw Groundhog Day. I was pretty young, and I wrote it off as another Bill Murray comedy. But the more I revisit it, the more I understand just how deep and good it is. It’s possibly the ultimate science fiction movie.
I think I mentioned this in another Groundhog Day thread once, but there’s a guy out there who has a theory that Ned Ryerson is also in a time loop. Exhibit A: notice how when Phil first meets Ned, he doesn’t remember him at all? And Ned gives him a load of detail about their school days? Later, Phil pulls the same trick on Nancy. Theory: in some other cycle of days (that this Phil hasn’t experienced), Ned has been gradually pumping him for information about his past, just like Phil does with Nancy.
There were other elements to the theory. All good far-fetched fun.