Buddhist Philosophy in Groundhog Day

By Kevin P. Albrecht

June 18, 2004

            The first time you watch the film Groundhog Day, it is easy to assume you have just seen a light-hearted romantic comedy—a genre that Bill Murray, the movie’s lead, is well known for.  But first impressions can be misleading.  While on one level, Groundhog Day does fit that description, it also functions on a much deeper level.  Throughout the strange and twisted events of the film, questions about God, life, death, kindness, and what it means to be human are frequently raised.  Whether it was intended or not, the story is the embodiment of Buddhist teaching.  The transformation of Phil, Bill Murray’s character, parallels the Buddhist teachings of karma, reincarnation, and nirvana.  As in Buddhism, the only way for Phil to change and to escape his ever repeating day is to overcome the self.

            The movie tells the tale of Phil, a weatherman from the big city who is assigned to go to the tiny town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the town’s annual unveiling of the groundhog on Groundhog Day.  Phil is characterized as a self-obsessed, sarcastic egomaniac who cares nothing about anyone but himself.  As Rita, Phil’s producer, says, “The only person you care about is yourself.”  This obsession with self is the underlying philosophy of Buddhism, and is considered to be the natural state of humanity.  On Groundhog Day, February 2, a strange thing happens to Phil: he begins waking up every single day to the same day.  Every day he wakes up and it is Groundhog Day.  At first, he is confused; but that feeling soon gives way to elation as he realizes that “[he] can do whatever [he] wants.”  He goes on a spree of stealing, abusing, and manipulating others; and he thinks that his actions (have no consequence, since no one but him remembers the events of the previous day.  Hundreds if not thousands of Groundhog Days pass.  He soon realizes that his actions have had a consequence on himself, a concept recognized by Buddhists as karma.  With every passing repeated day, he gets more and more depressed, eventually losing all concept of who he is.  He tries committing suicide, but he still wakes up every single day in Punxsutawney.  In desperation he says, “I’ve killed myself so many times, I don’t even exist anymore.”  At this point, he has attained emptiness of self, the first step in Buddhism to enlightenment.  As Jacky Sach, a Buddhist writer explains, “…the self is an illusion born of the ego with no reality to base itself on” (Sach 35).  After realizing that he is nothing, Phil repurposes his life.  He spends each day helping others.  He tries to save the life of a homeless man, reunites an estranged couple, and entertains the entire town with his newly learned piano skills.  All these new acts put others above his self.  Finally, after he has realized the non-existence of self, he escapes the cycle, awaking on February 3.  This escaping from the eternal cycle is the fundamental goal of Buddhist practice, called nirvana, which a Buddhist sees as escaping the cycle of reincarnation and becoming one with the universe.

            The film abounds with symbols that support the Buddhist metaphor.  Throughout the entire movie, Phil, Bill Murray’s character, is always looking up to his producer, Rita, played by Andie MacDowell.  Rita is everything Phil wants in a woman and has all the attributes that he wants and needs in himself.  As Rita says, she is a “go with the flow” type of person.  She is always kind to others—a stark contrast to Phil’s egocentrism.  In one scene, as noted by Tom Armstrong, a Zen Buddhist teacher, she stands in front of a television studio blue screen (frequently used by weathermen) wearing a blue shirt and she disappears into the background on the video monitor, symbolizing her non-existence of self.  Contrasting imagery is found when Phil stands in the same screen wearing a black suit and he is vividly separate from the background.

            The setting, although the same throughout the entire movie, is constantly presented differently, giving the town and its buildings a different feeling in each scene.  The set is constantly reinforcing Phil’s feelings of claustrophobia.  The town is encapsulated within a square, where most of the action takes place.  When Phil tries to leave the town, a blizzard comes and keeps him trapped there.  Even technology fails him when the blizzard causes the phone lines to go down, making him unable to contact the outside world.

            The filmmakers put sound and music to great use in many scenes.  The opening theme, “Weatherman” by Delbert McClinton, seems to summarize the entire story; it tells the tale of someone being depressed and feeling down but then being uplifted when they realize that they cannot rely only on themselves.  When Phil awakes everyday, he hears a similar message in the song, “I Got You Babe” by Sonny and Cher.  The line “so put your little hand in mine/there ain’t no hill or mountain we can’t climb” wakes Phil every morning on his alarm clock.  Both these songs support the movie’s theme of overcoming egocentrism.

            Special effects play a very small part in the movie, which actually helps to emphasize the actual message.  If the director had overused special effects, the focus would have been moved off of the theme of the movie and could easily have become a science fiction movie.  One of the only notable special effects in when the camera zooms in especially close to the alarm clock that wakes Phil every morning.  The cinematographer adjusts the camera angle so that the alarm clock seems to be dominating Phil, symbolizing the feelings of helplessness Phil feels.

            An especially interesting theme in the movie is a metaphor of cold weather symbolizing depression and the helplessness of Phil.  In the opening song, there is a line which expresses this metaphor well: “predictions show, extended low/I'm feeling just the same.”  Here, the cold weather represents Phil’s egocentrism which makes him feel incomplete.  But the song gets more cheerful with the line, "but seasons come, and seasons go, I'll make you smile again.”  That line not only emphasizes the Buddhist doctrine of expressing loving-kindness to others, but it also shows the growing optimism of Phil.  When the groundhog predicts a longer winter, he foreshadows the doubt and tribulations that Phil will face.  Even the radio disc jockey expresses Phil’s feelings of helplessness through the cold when he says, “It's cold outside!  It’s cold outside every day."  Phil explicitly realizes this when he predicts for himself, “It's gonna be cold, it's gonna be grey, and it’s gonna last you the rest of your life.”  Once Phil has overcome his egocentrism, he takes a much more optimistic view of the cold winter, stating, “winter is just another step in the cycle of life.”  This cycle he has realized is called samsara in Buddhism (Sach 18).

            The film can be compared to other movies in the same genre, but it defies all those stereotypes.  Although superficially a romantic comedy, the romantic comedy aspect takes a back seat to the dilemma Phil finds himself in.  The romance with Rita only serves to show how his goals change in the movie.  He begins by trying to take advantage of Rita for his own selfish reasons.  When he ends, however, he is only trying to please her.  Another genre that it is tempting to compare it to is time travel science fiction films.  Again, the movie does not really fit here either as it offers no scientific explanation for the events that occur.  The time travel aspect of the film cannot be explained away by a time machine or a wormhole.  Instead, it must be understood on a metaphorical level.  Even though it fits in no specific genre, Groundhog Day succeeds at what it does do: present a morality tale.  The Buddhist aspects of the film make it especially attractive to religious studies students because it presents the teachings of that faith in a way that anyone can understand easily.

Groundhog Day presents its Buddhist ideology in a way attractive and understandable to Western moviegoers.  Its ideology—that escape and redemption is found through overcoming the self and helping others—is hardly novel, but the pop-culture representation of it certainly might be.  Although the movie can be seen to specifically address Buddhist thought, one should not overemphasize that.  As Harold Ramis, the movie’s director said in an interview with movie critic Michael Sragow:

…The response from the spiritual community to [Groundhog Day] was unbelievable.  I literally got letters from every known religious organization and discipline, from yogis, Hasidic Jews, Jesuits, psychoanalysts -- all claiming the movie, all saying you must be one of us because this movie so perfectly expresses our philosophy. (Sragow)

This startling revelation shows just how close the world’s religions actually are to each other.  Maybe someday, presentations like this film will bring these diverse schools of thought closer together and help all of humanity understand each other better.

Works Cited

Armstrong, Tom.  “On the Trail of the Groundhog.”  Zen Unbound.  May 1998.  12 June 2004.  <http://www.schindler.org/psacot/20010813_ghd_ta_ott.shtml>.

Groundhog Day.  Dir. Harold Ramis.  Perf. Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell.  1993.  DVD Video.  Columbia-Tristar Home Video, 1997.

Sach, Jacky.  The Everything Buddhism Book.  Avon, Massachusetts: Avon Media, 2003.

Sragow, Michael.  “King of Comedy.”  Salon.com.  2 November 2000.  14 June 2004.  <http://dir.salon.com/ent/col/srag/2000/11/02/ramis/index.html?pn=1>.