Lessons for 365 Days

Until I read this essay by Jonah Goldberg, I never thought much more about the movie Groundhog Day than the purely surface level comedy and good-natured lessons it taught.  I've always thought Bill Murray is very funny but very underrated actor and Harold Ramis, the film's director, is underrated as well.

Here is Jonah on the deeper lessons contained within that go largely unnoticed:

The point [of the movie] is that [Bill Murray's character Phil] Connors slowly realizes that what makes life worth living is not what you get from it, but what you put into it. He takes up the piano. He reads poetry — no longer to impress Rita, but for its own sake. He helps the locals in matters great and small, including catching a boy who falls from a tree every day. “You never thank me!” he yells at the fleeing brat. He also discovers that there are some things he cannot change, that he cannot be God. The homeless man whom Connors scorns at the beginning of the film becomes an obsession of his at the end because he dies every Groundhog Day. Calling him “pop” and “dad,” Connors tries to save him but never can.

By the end of the film, Connors is no longer obsessed with bedding Rita. He’s in love with her, without reservation and without hope of his affection being requited. Only in the end, when he completely gives up hope, does he in fact “get” the woman he loves. And with that, with her love, he finally wakes on February 3, the great wheel of life no longer stuck on Groundhog Day. As NR’s own Rick Brookhiser explains it, “The curse is lifted when Bill Murray blesses the day he has just lived. And his reward is that the day is taken from him. Loving life includes loving the fact that it goes.”

Jonah notes how these teachings go against the typical modern notions of being true to yourself and listening to your "inner voices."  His observation that Murray's character begins to transition to loving things for their own sake is taken straight from Aristotle, which can't be said about many movies today.