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https://nationalpost.com/enter...e-great-harold-ramis


The x in this equation is: How long does it take to become a good person? Christians will tell you it’s the work of a lifetime. Buddhists allow that more than one life may be required. Most people will say there’s always room for improvement.

The uncertainty — both in terms of length of time needed and definition of the goal — is part of what gives Groundhog Day its perennial appeal. (That and it’s a darn funny movie.) It also creates fascination among thinkers of all stripes.


Ramis, speaking in an interview on the 15th anniversary of the film, said that within days of its release in February of 1993 (it opened, oddly, on the 12th) there were Hasidic Jews outside the theatre holding signs that read: “Are you living the same day over and over again?”

Jewish teaching holds that an enlightened, meaningful existence is predicated on performing mitzvahs — specifically the 613 commandments laid out in the Torah, but more generally meaning good deeds. The actual mitzvahs range from the obscure — “That the breastplate shall not be loosened from the ephod” — to the straightforward — “To love the stranger” — and it’s a fair bet the mitzvah completist would need more than a month of Sundays (or perhaps Saturdays) to work through them.

Ramis was later approached by yogis and psychiatrists, who saw the theme of eternal recurrence as a way into their own teachings and practices. Buddhists see in Groundhog Day a reference to samsara, a cycle of rebirth. (In this interpretation, Phil is the bodhisattva, returning to the world to save it.)

Christians also embraced the film, with its images of purgatory and rebirth. The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops says it’s suitable for adults and adolescents, though warning about its “occasional sexual innuendo and comic treatment of theft and suicide.”

The website catholicculture.org lists it among the 50 best Catholic movies of all time. “I do not know the religious affiliation of Danny Rubin,” the reviewer says, “but I do know that his picture embodies the message taught and lived by many saints.” (Rubin and Ramis were both raised as Jews, though Ramis said he didn’t practice any religion later in life.)

But read into it what you will, the film does not take a religious stand itself. The only reference to God on the screen is when Phil, after trying various means of suicide (in one attempt he takes the groundhog with him) only to wake up alive the next/same morning, declares that he must be a god — though not the God, he clarifies.

Even the choice of holiday is uniquely a-religious, although the notion of a groundhog predicting the coming spring seems like a secularized pagan holdover, like all those fecund bunnies and chicks that populate the Christian Easter season.


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