Post-February 2nd reflections: how long does Bill Murray spend in Ground Hog Day?
One blogger’s answer: “8 years, 8 months, and 16 days.”
Director Harold Ramis replies:
I think the 10-year estimate is too short. It takes at least 10 years to get good at anything, and alloting for the down time and misguided years he spent, it had to be more like 30 or 40 years”¦ People [like the blogger] have way too much time on their hands. They could be learning to play the piano or speak French or sculpt.
After the election, Harold, after the election.
But I’ll go on record as saying that I always felt it was a time way longer than a human life. First, the character had to master his depression and rage and acting out before he could even begin to learn any skills at all. Then, I always figured the skills we actually see in the movie are just the tip of the iceberg of what he knows. In addition, he’s memorized the movements of everyone in town on that day, and also everything about the Rita character’s likes and dislikes and history.
Maybe not infinity. But definitely a long, long, super-long time.
…it had to be a few hundred years. Several lifetimes at the very least.
…especially given the implied memorization of each life in the city.
How many years to become a …surgeon? MD? psychiatrist? musician? mechanic? poet? artist? sculptor?
…and yeah, the movie implies the knowledge gained of many, many diverse careers.
…to become so tired of ennui you choose suicide, over and over? And finally, give even that up?
Moreover: when offered all the temptations of life, including a virtual immortality of sorts, how many years …how many lifetimes …to change from an insecure self-centered narcissist …to a man of depth and myriad accomplishments, so worthwhile and loving, that he impresses a town, and close collegues, of being worthwhile, caring, and loving …all in that one day?
You might ask: How long to grow a soul?
A lot more than the 3650 days of only 10 years.
…so yeah, best to just leave it at …a long, long, super-long time.
The original script has him trapped in Punxsutawney for 10,000 years. Jonah Goldberg has a nice piece on the flick at http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/228088/movie-all-time/jonah-goldberg
Read the post and thought, “oh, I’d better point out Jonah Goldberg’s piece.” 🙂
I think I assumed when I first saw it that it was many years, “many” being in the tens at least, but didn’t try to guess any further.
Ecclesiastes and Groundhog Day
I love the movie. Some of my thoughts about it:
Each of us, embedded inside, have what Bill Murray’s character had: a desire for something more – for something eternal and meaningful. We desire God.
Our desire for God amounts to proof of God.
Think of hunger. Hunger is not a sign that food is a projection, or an illusion. Rather, hunger proves the existence of food.
Our desires do not mislead us. Our desires order us to reality. So, also, our desire for God. Our desire for something which transcends the limitations of this world .. means we have, within us, a sort of participation in the eternal .. which orders us to reality.
And, this is the point of Ecclesiates: the author’s very desire, for something more, proved, to the author’s satisfaction, the existence of something more, i.e. proved the existence of God. Thereafter, the anguish, of the author of Ecclesiastes, that everything in this world is futility and vanity, was assuaged by knowledge that our actions in this world amount to participation in the eternal. Thus, Ecclesiastes 3:22 :
The full context: Our work is participation in the eternal, and there is nothing better than participation in the eternal.
I like to think that Bill Murray’s character, Phil, came to the same realization.
Howard Storm had a near death experience in which he says he experienced hell, and God. His takeaway: “God wants us to live with him forever. God, in His infinite wisdom, has given us this experience of the physical world to prepare us to choose what we want to do for eternity. Its our choice.”
If this is so, and I believe it is, then life is opportunity to practice living w/o God, and to see what that is like, then to practice living with God, and to see what that is like. If so, then life is a lot like Groundhog Day: we get to practice different methods of living, and we have opportunity to see which is the most fulfilling and wonderful.
Wow, I obviously need to watch this again. I think I’ve only seen it once and it was years ago. I had no idea that he spent so long in Groundhog Day.
Feeling quite shallow right now, not having thought through all these deep things.
Its a movie and anything can happen in a movie so I vote he spent one day in Punxsutawney experiencing the same day from a different perspective over and over again until he got it right.
I hate repetition.
Therefore, I hate the movie.
LOL.
IT TOOK NO TIME.
THE REPETITIONS OCCURRED BETWEEN ONE ONE MOMENT AND THE NEXT, AS IN CONTACT.
HE PROBABLY HAD TO DO IT 1776 TIMES.
One of my favorite movies. I never stopped to think how many times he repeated the same day. Now here is a trick question: If he repeated the same day over and over, did he really spend 8-10 years in Groundhog Day?
I only saw it once, years ago, and I never got the idea that he spent that long in Punxsutawney Purgatory.
Clearly this is a movie that calls for repeated viewings.
/rimshot
I must have watched that movie a hundred times, I never get bored of it. I love his cynicism at the beginning, then the end when he is finally at peace with himself. Funny, I have spent many hours thinking about the film, but never really stopped to wonder how long he was there. Way more than 40 years though I’d say, he does appear to have a god-like omniscience by the end.
Is it not his Purgatory?
Lord only knows how long that might be.
My favorite movie. We all have flaws, big and small, and it’s comforting to think that given time and opportunity even the worst of us might find a redemption of sorts.
I would agree with the very very long time in his one day loop – in order to bring about the changes in himself and master the details of the townspeople and skills he picks up.
A distant cousin of this movie might be the TV series “Dead Like Me”. The Grim Reapers in that story are souls held over on this side of the life/death divide to reap souls and escort them to the cross over. The Reapers don’t age (and can’t be harmed or obviously killed since they’re already dead), can’t live normally among the living they hide among, and are otherwise severely restricted. However, their minds are pretty much left alone to sulk in self pity at their fate, or to grow. The head of the reapers, Rube, who reminds me of Groundhog Day the most, was a blue collar worker of sorts who was killed (1927) before the Great Depression and has had all the time in between to himself. In the show in one episode or another it’s clear he’s read widely, learned foreign languages (French at least), and come to appreciate a broad range of music (from Classical to Barry Manilow) while he waits his own opportunity to cross over.
The two works approach from different directions, but get to the same end. In both the bodies don’t age and can’t be harmed, but in both the minds are open to change, free will, to improve, or not, for a very long time.
@Davisbr:
“Moreover: when offered all the temptations of life, including a virtual immortality of sorts, how many years …how many lifetimes …to change from an insecure self-centered narcissist …to a man of depth and myriad accomplishments, so worthwhile and loving, that he impresses a town, and close collegues, of being worthwhile, caring, and loving …all in that one day?
And why would one do all that for a woman: man is not made to please woman or to be her adjunct.
Hell, he would be so much her superior in all things that she would most definitely say, “you’re too deep and intelligent for me. You’re also not rough enough.” The movie sequel would last twenty one minutes: ten minutes of intro, one minute of him banging his head against a wall, and ten minutes of credits; if it were an action film, he would shoot the groundhog.
@ Otiose:
A distant cousin of this movie might be the TV series “Dead Like Me”.
I liked that series and was sorry to see it end somewhat unresolved. Mandy Pitakin (sp. ?) was a good character in it.
He spent one day but during that day he slipped into an alternate dimension outside the 4 we exisit in which required he achieve a certain level of consciousness before he could be returned to these 4 dimension and resume his life as it takes place during that day with no apparent time differetial. In other words a time loop.
Yes, NJartist49, Mandy Patinkin played Rube, the head of group of reapers in Seattle. A lot of the unresolved loose ends were connected to the Rube character, who by the time of the series opening in 2003 is well over a 100 years old. So for that character there were a lot of issues with the Groundhog Day aspect.
Long enough to become a good, moral person. How long can that take?
@trebuchet I think there are a few ways you could go with explaining the repeating day, including as your time loop …
First, the purely supernatural: think of it as a form of purgatory (it especially helps if you’re Catholic). He is forced to experience the one day for some unknown piece of eternity, with variations that are solely his to create and manage.
Second, as merely a kind of strange but still natural manifestation of a multi-verse and time scenario, where his mind moves “sideways” through the worlds of adjacent event-lines, but “slips” backwards exactly 24 hours to Feb 2 @ 06:00A with each mind-slip. Every day is the same day, but he’s not really in the same local universe he was in 24 hours previously. And so his consciousness is in a different body each day (think of it as a kind of possession or hosting or even sharing).
Third, as a time-loop …where his consciousness alone loops back exactly 24 hours every 06:00A: the world appears to be, and is (in effect), standing still. His consciousness is existing “outside” time (if you will) for that single instant when the loop returns to its starting point.
In two of those, he only “spent” one physical Feb 2 in the town. He didn’t age physically, but his mind certainly did “age”, and acquired experiences and knowledge and – finally – wisdom of his several lifetimes.
However, in the multi-verse scenario, you could make the argument that he lived as many lives and spent as many “days of years” as his memory recalled …and presumably the world of his final time-line was far removed in the reality continuum from the one he started in.
Any one of those would be logically consistent, don’t you think?
…yeah, I had way too much time on my hands this evening.