Film Review: Groundhog Day

Who would have predicted that Harold Ramis and Bill Murray, who gave us the entertaining but intellectually vacant GHOSTBUSTERS, would eventually produce an important film like GROUNDHOG DAY?

Yes, I said important - by which I mean not just entertaining but also intellectually engaging and morally instructive. I want to put it to you that GROUNDHOG DAY is among the most important popular American films ever.

The viewer comes to realize, while enjoying the plot's clever variations on the theme of a single day, that he/she is being offered a moral lesson.

The character played by Bill Murray starts out as selfish, cynical, and discontented. When he finds he is living the same day over and over, his first reaction is to take advantage of the absence of consequences by behaving with complete irresponsibility. Then he supposes that he can use his predicament to learn all about the women who attract him, with the intention of seducing them. When these plans end in failure or disatisfaction, he becomes suicidal. His multiple attempts to do away with himself are, perhaps, not believable (the ways he chooses are painful), but his acceptance that there is no way out through death allows him to realise the real meaning of life. He works hard to make himself a better and more attractive person, eventually winning his ladylove's heart fairly and squarely and breaking the curse of his captivity in Groundhog Day.

The lesson offered by this film is that the meaning of life is neither loveless pleasure nor despairing death, it is fulfilment through unselfish love of others, which is based on love of self.