Today is tomorrow
On the enduring influence of an existential meditation disguised as romantic fantasy-comedy
At least a decade ago we started a tradition of watching Groundhog Day (1989, dir. Harold Ramis) on or around February 2nd, in this dreariest part of our Midwest winter when any holiday cheer is long gone but spring still feels like improbable dream. That the story takes place in this most arduous stretch of the year only heightens the sense of disillusionment and dread it channels. Like any thirty-plus year old movie, it’s dated soundtrack and dissipating cultural references keep it frozen in time. Yet in the decades since, the holiday itself has only grown in popularity, both reinforced by and simultaneously reinforcing the influence of the film along with it. Why do we keep returning to it and treating what was meant to be entertainment as something more like a religious text? There are many answers, but the key to its appeal could just be in the simple but innovative story that reveals as much about ourselves and human nature as its characters.
Phil in the beginning is many of us in our worst moments; selfish and self-centered, condescending and cynical, arrogant and ungrateful. He insults his co-workers, mocks the Punxsutawney townsfolk, and deigns to do his job as a weather reporter while still feeling entitled to special treatment befitting a minor celebrity. Phil is both the center of his universe, and universally dissatisfied.
What disrupts his narcissistic trajectory is the first time he repeats Groundhog Day; and without any omniscient narrative context for the viewer to make sense of Phil’s situation, we as the audience can only identify with his confusion and disturbance. This transition into purgatory is distressing, but once Phil gets over his initial alarm, the idea of ‘no tomorrow’ starts to sound appealing–especially to the middle-aged adolescents he drinks with at the bowling alley who proclaim, “we could do whatever we want!” Taking them on up on the idea, driving their car down railroad trestle with the police on his tail, Phil proclaims, “I’m not gonna live by their rules anymore!” (Who is the ‘they’?) Like a wayward teen, the only thing he is rebelling against is the concept of accountability.
His initial attempts to take advantage of his predicament–seducing Nancy Taylor, gathering detail to help him win over Rita, robbing an armored car just for the heck of it, or cosplaying as Clint Eastwood–all display his narcissism and lack of empathy. The cosmic experiment is so far only bringing Phil’s character more clearly into focus, and it’s not a nice picture. Sitting with Rita at the coffee shop, stuffing his face with pastry, he boasts, “I don’t worry about anything.”
But we soon see how one can only spend so many days on the hedonic treadmill. The charm of a life without consequence soon wears off for Phil, and the funhouse becomes a house of horror as he realizes that ‘no tomorrow’ is not so much a permission slip to run wild as a life sentence in a singular hell; having plumbed the depths of self-absorption and come up with nothing, he reaches a nadir. Realizing his powerlessness against the situation he grows increasingly depressed, despondent, and then desperate, trying to take his own life in successively drastic but nevertheless futile ways. He comes to realize that he has been given the maximum whack from fate, as Vonnegut put it. He can’t live, but he can’t die.
What Phil has been deprived of, of course, is time itself. He comes to learn that the passage of time and his finitude are what define existence, and when time ceases to exist for Phil, life itself loses all meaning. The process of living the same day over and over and over again effectively pulverizes not just his sense of self but his certainty about anything. And it is only at this point, at rock bottom, that he can begin to relate to others in any meaningful way, confiding his predicament in Rita and eliciting her genuine curiosity.
When Phil tells Rita “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore,” he means it. If our identity is one sense nothing more than a story we tell ourselves to make sense of our past and steer us nto the our future, by this point in the story Phil’s countless diligent but failed attempts to end his own life will have surely erased any notion of whoever he thought he was at the beginning. Whoever he was when this started is long gone. While Rita is sleeping, he confesses admiration (“I don’t deserve someone like you…”) which she doesn’t hear, but it doesn’t matter because he’s really speaking to himself in a moment of reflection.
But earning Rita’s sympathy is not enough, because even after she stays with him of her own volition, he is not yet released from his personal hell. Perhaps inspired by her, and having exhausted his sense of self-pity —or his entire sense of self, for that matter — Phil wakes with a renewed sense of purpose not to game his system, but to instead make the best of it. He arrives here out of sheer boredom as much as anything.
In a world where his ‘self’ has been erased, the only thing he can do is turn his attention outward toward others. And it is a coping mechanism, as well; resigned to his hell, omniscient for all practical purposes, the only semblance of control or contribution he can exert is to learn enough about this world and the characters who populate it to be of some value or service to them.
And learn he does, about anything, anyone, and everyone. He reads, learns the piano, creates ice sculptures. He takes every opportunity he can find to help others no matter who they are, whether changing a flat tire, catching a reckless kid falling from a tree, buying insurance from an irritating salesman, or trying to save the life of an elderly homeless man. And he does this because what else is there that is worth doing? Robbed of time, of any surprise or novelty, he is turning his curse into a new gift- of curiosity and empathy and seemingly infinite chances to learn and grow, and he slowly seems to recognize this. With no one to answer to but himself, his acts of service and generosity themselves become his rewards.
When Phil awakes then in a new day, exclaiming “Do you know what today is? Today is tomorrow!”, his gratitude is sincere, as he values time now in a way he did not before. It is both a celebration of his release, and an exultation of the simple and brutal truth of his life and our lives: that this day is indeed all we have. The past is gone forever, the future is at best a half-truth, and it is only through our engagement with the here and now that we get to create any kind of tomorrow.
