Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Groundhog Day

Leaving aside the question of whether a groundhog can predict the weather (six more weeks of winter? EEK! Have I mentioned I'm kind of over winter right now?), I'm going to dive off the usual path and do an existential review of the movie. You remember it, right? Bill Murray plays an overwhelmingly self-assured weatherman who finds himself stuck on the same day (with Sonny and Cher waking him up every morning) until....ta-da!...he makes some big changes. Not just playing the piano, or finding out what Andie McDowell's favorite drink is, but somewhere along the line, he starts doing good and having fun and enjoying other people...for the sake of doing good and having fun and the other people--not just whether it's going to get the girl. Only when he has a complete inner transformation, AND resigns himself to the circumstances (he's aware he's repeating the day), is the spell, curse, whatever, broken.

Classical magical fairy tale: transformation requires love, faith, and frequently a crap-load of pain, but it's only by going through it that we move beyond it and return to (or discover) our true selves.

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