Groundhog Day again
For the MMC (Mercy! Movie Club) I have just watched the fourth of fifth time of Groundhog Day. Still more to feel and discover besides the affective reflection on repetition of life in nature that I mentioned in my first blog entry, and the relationship between one's attitude and life "entrapment".Being doomed to repeat is not the saddest thing here, like Rita remarks, "it may not be a curse". And that applies to us all I think. Phil is lucky because he remembers ("I am a god, not The GOD," he says) and got the chance to get enlightened... OK, or just changed ("It's not me, it's the universe. I am just the vessel.") Think about Ned, Nancy, Larry or any one in and outside the backdrop who repeat again and again without realizing. You may have been planning for your first Paris trip twenty times already, loving the same person, falling into the same dilemma a hundred times, devoting your life for your first million dollars for a trillion times... just because you have forgotten because of some reason - ignorance of time by our own species (re: C.S. Lewis' "The Dark Tower") or reincarnation in any form.
I saw this time Rita, the producer, has a more significant role. Kevin Alteu marks the signification of selflessness as manifested in the episode she appears first, with her body dissolved into the TV set on the screen. This probably gave her a more transcendental position in the repetitive process. Transparencynow also notes her maternal role for the nurturing of Phil's enlightenment. Perhaps this loving mother figure is the most religious element to me.
Paul E. Schindler did a very comprehensive research on the web annotated after his own essay, Groundhog Day The Movie, Buddhism and Me. Another interesting reading, The Ned Ryerson Conundrum by Tom Armstrong, I read earlier is listed there with more of his other two essays also.
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3 Comments:
Do you think Larry is Phil's important teacher during his repeated life. In the film, Larry said to Phil she would love guy with such such... good quality. Phil said it's me me.... When Larry became Phil's target, he had tried to used his different ways to reach the goal but fail every time.
In fact Larry herself has already achieved these kind of virtues(qualified teacher) and so she can know Phil's every spiritual level.
Maybe the repeatedly appearance of our friends, teachers, relatives in our many many lifes is to lead us to reach the goal. However we always feel tiresome with their appearance instead of thinking their value to me.
Agnes, I think you mean Rita, the female protagonist and the TV producer, when you wrote "Larry" here, am I right? :-)
Yes, should be the TV producer. Thanks for your correction.
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