The Transformation of Phil Connors

Rating: 9/10 (4 March 2020)

When I was young I loved Groundhog Day because of Bill Murray, and all things Bill Murray were life to me. Every couple years I would watch it and it would reveal to me new things about life. This year I watched it, and as I basked in the glow of the amazing ending, I realized exactly why this film means so much to me. Why it is Harold Ramis' best work, and Bill Murray's best performance. It is about time, transformation, and the weather. It is about love, but it is also about becoming a person who truly loves others, and accepting oneself and circumstances beyond one's control to find happiness within. It's about the beauty of ice sculptures, and becoming unstuck in yourself.
The thing to understand is that I never bought the ending of Charles Dickens' The Christmas Carol. I have never accepted Paul-on-the-road-to-Damascus, instantaneous conversion stories. My general experience has been: people's personalities tend to remain largely the same over time. So Ebenezer Scrooge's sudden overnight shift in personality was just not believable to me. In all adaptations of the Christmas Carol (including Scrooged, in which Bill Murray also plays the old miser), the happy ending and redeemed villain never landed for me. Through fear and regret imposed by supernatural entities, Scooge gets up on Christmas a new human being - seemingly having undergone a brain transplant with Sérgio de Mello. He's a rich philanthropist now, and brings joy to the hearts of children. All the work of one night. Huh. . . uh, no.
But the transformation of Phil Connors in Groundhog Day lands for me. And the catharsis of this transformation and what it suggests about life is the heart of this film. The weatherman Phil Connors begins in the story as an egotist, a careerist, a condescending, bitter, sexist, and selfish person. But even here there is a note of promise: Phil admits to his love interest Rita (played with miraculous grace by Andie McDowell) that he doesn't like himself. Phil reluctantly goes to the Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania to cover the annual Groundhog Day festival, a task he considers beneath him. He despises the "hick" town and treats everyone with sarcasm or barely concealed contempt.
When the time loop begins, Phil becomes trapped on February 2. Everyone else is now following the same deterministic path and time schedule and conversations as the "previous" day. The only variable is Phil himself - he has the agency to change the course of events, and he knows what is coming. The trouble is that each morning he wakes up in the bed and breakfast in Punxsutawney at 6:00 am to Sonny and Cher's "I Got You Babe" and all the actions have been reset. The only thing that is retained is Phil's memory and experiences.
At first Phil is shocked, naturally. Soon he sees how powerful he is and begins taking advantage of people - thieving, seducing women, driving recklessly, and indulging a hedonistic lifestyle. But soon its clear that he really wants love - he learns everything he can about his producer Rita, and attempts to woo her. But each time she sees through his shallow maneuvers and into the emptyness of his soul. He becomes bereft, suicidal. He even kidnaps the groundhog itself and drives off a cliff to a fiery fate. But he cannot die: each time he ends his life he reawakens to February 2 once again. Trapped in a hellish limbo, a Nietzschean Eternal Return, Phil begins to slowly accept his fate.
And then. By degrees and by experiences, Phil starts the miracle of transformation. The crucible of Groundhog Day has destroyed the old Phil and something new is emerging from the ashes. It begins with accepting that someone like him doesn't deserve Rita, as he is - she is a kind and loving person, and he is not. Slowly, Phil begins the process of being a better person through action. He helps strangers with their problems, saves lives, heals relationships, and betters himself by learning piano and ice sculpture. He begins to love the town of Punxsutawney and its inhabitants, not as means to end, but for themselves. And he does all this not in order to gain Rita's affections, but in order to finally accept himself.
He also accepts his limitations. Phil is not a god: just as he cannot force Rita to love him, he cannot save everyone. He tries to save a homeless man in various ways from dying - but each day he fails. Phil may be trapped in immortality but he is not omnipotent.
The movie never fully explains what caused the time loop or what caused it to end. There are various fan theories and speculations, and I actually prefer the ambiguity surrounding it. But I do like to think that what broke the loop was the final piece of Phil's metamorphosis. The moment he tells Rita next to her ice sculpture that, "No matter what happens tomorrow or for the rest of my life, I'm happy now. Because I love you." This sad scene always brings me near tears: Phil has accepted that this time and place are all he has, a brief candle to spend with Rita. But the key is that he has accepted himself and is happy with himself, as he is. He has become a person worthy of love. Rita, for her part, sees the good man that Phil actually is, and is drawn to him. He doesn't tell her about the time loop anymore, or try to win her by superficial means. He is honest and generous in his spirit.
At that very moment, the weather changes for the first time in years (it's unclear how long Phil's been trapped, but probably about 40 years). This is the moment the loop breaks and Phil becomes unstuck in himself, in my opinion.
He awakens the next day and it is February 3. Rita is beside him. Allow me to return briefly to Scrooge. When Scrooge awakens he throws open the window, rushes through town, furiously righting wrongs and deliriously trying to undo years of curmudgeonly behavior. But Phil Connors rushes to the window and sees the new day has come, and rushes back to bed with Rita. He asks her what he can do for her today. Here is the distinction: Phil is already a transformed man, a good man. He changed in just a day. . . one very long day. But we see through Bill Murray's incredible performance that this is the same man from the beginning, but transfigured. We saw the pain and tumultuousness of that transfiguration, like the changing of weather patterns. The blizzard has cleared and last and we see a blue sky. So we know this change is real and lasting. What's more, the last line of Groundhog Day is: "Let's live here."
The miracle of Groundhog Day is not the supernatural time loop, or the ending of the time loop. There are no warnings from spirits of the past or future. It is always now in Groundhog Day. And the time for transformation is always in the now. The miracle of Groundhog Day is the transformation of one human being, and that is why it is one of my favorite films of all.