Groundhog's Day

Recently, Jonah Goldberg of National Review Online, posted a bleg [a beg on a blog] for opinions of the movie "Groundhog's Day". He is of the opinion that it is a great movie and he wanted reasons for to support that. Here's my first post of "amateur philosophizing" . I happen to agree with him and so I wrote him the following email several days ago:

Dear Jonah- I read you often and enjoy your work immensely. I throw around "cheese-eating surrender monkeys" as often as possible. I know the Simpsons coined it, but you circulated it.

I agree with you that GD is a movie for the ages. I, too, was a philosophy major. But now, you're a professional and I'm still an amateur. But here goes, anyway: I think GD grapples with "the problem of suffering" beautifully. Remember the sequence where Bill Murray notices the homeless guy? Murray tries repeatedly to change the outcome of that day [with the man dying] and no matter what he does, he cannot change the outcome. The man ultimately dies. The thing that Murray does is give comfort to the dying and not let him die alone. It is poignant and beautiful. Mother Theresa would be proud of him. Was that suffering for naught? No. Bill Murray's character learned compassion from it. He made the
same change with regard to Needlenose Ned, when he took an irritating exchange and changed Ned's day for the better.

GD shows, from my perspective, why suicide can be considered a sin of despair and how useless and cowardly it is. [recall the montage (hilarious where the groundhog is driving!) where Murray tries to off himself, only to learn that he can't escape that way. He also learns that in some sense he is immortal. But he perceives it as an earthly immortality. Christians know it as a different kind]. Similarly, the movie does a full-frontal assault on existentialism [you are what you do] with the final conclusion being you exist to love, and the more fully you love, the more fully actualized you are. The more self-donating you are [i.e., selflessly loving--not just trying to bed Andie MacDowell] the more likely you are to change your circumstance [i.e., end the Groundhog day repeat cycle or at least make it a beautiful day worth living over and over again]

Here's another angle you may never have considered: Groundhog's day coincides with a minor Catholic feast--the Feast of Candlemass. It is 40 days after Christmas, and it is the Feast of the Presentation [i.e., the time when Mary ended her period of uncleanness and bathed in the Temple waters and presented her infant to the world, to be seen by Anna and Simeon AS the light of the world--the fulfillment of the prophesy of the ages and personal prophecies.] The secular Groundhog event is done as a question of light [will there be more winter or spring right away] and in fact, it has its link to the original Catholic feast. But don't you see the movie as a personal enlightenment film? Isn't the character at the end MUCH MORE [fill in the blank--loving, caring, brave, talented, optimistic, beautiful] than he was at the beginning? There is a part of me that believes that a good and faithful Catholic was behind the movie. Indeed, the Murray brothers often harken back to their Catholic roots... But I often wonder. The repetitiveness of the movie reminds me of Catholicism [especially the Mass and the Sacrament of Confession]---you do the same things again and again and again, but you ARE NOT the same person because the Sacraments change you in a real way. I see that I have veered from straight philosophy to religion. I did the same thing with my own life. I can no longer separate the two.

I hope you and yours are well. I wrote to you a lot several years ago and you graced me with a reply. You now have a wife and child and I still have a husband, but my man and I now have 3 children [the oldest is 2.5 years old --- yes there are twins in there]. I would be honored if you ever saw fit to reply. Ruth Anne Adams :) Clemmons, North Carolina