If every culture is entitled to have a certain idiosyncratic ritual, such as Mamemaki (豆撒き) for Japanese and Villain Hitting (打小人) for Cantonese, then for American Groundhog Day will be one of those. Although I don’t think many people will actually plan their spring vacation around the prediction the groundhog made, the occasion was greeted with much fanfare across the country, particularly in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, where the tradition supposedly originated from. The whole proceeding receives major coverage from all weather channels every year and it also gave birth to one of his most critically acclaimed movies for comedian Bill Murray, also named Groundhog Day.
Strategically released the week after Groundhog Day and just before Valentine's Day in 1993, the movie Groundhog Day tells the story of a conceited man named Phil Connors who worked as a weatherman in a small local TV station in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania. He was, against his will, sent to Punxsutawney to cover the Groundhog festival for the fourth year in a row. Accompanying him was cameraman Larry and producer Rita whom Phil secretly fancied.
However, even the charming Rita could not make the experience any more bearable for Phil and he won’t waste a moment to flee town the minute he perfunctorily finished his coverage. As fate would have it, a massive blizzard that supposedly should detour the area has changed its course and hit Punxsutawney in full blast, causing all the major highways to be closed and everyone had to turn back. Hardly the happy camper, Phil barely dragged through the night but then strange things happened: he woke up the next morning to the same date as the day before, re-encountering the same events with the same conversation all over again. Even stranger, the same thing happened again the day after, and the day after… Before long he realized by some force of nature, he was eternally trapped in a time loop and had to relive the day he detested the most over and over again, Groundhog Day.
Throughout the course of the movie, Phil’s reaction to this unexpected turn of events went through a series of stages – First he was perplexed, then he was elated as he realized he would never need to be responsible for his action when tomorrow never came, but soon boredom crept in which ultimately led to despair and suicidal. Nothing, nevertheless, could alter the fact that it will always be Groundhog Day every day. Eventually, out of desperation, he seeks comfort from Rita by confiding to her with his implausible tale even though he knew no matter how understanding Rita could be, it would all go back to square one when the day was over...
For many, Bill Murray’s Oscar nomination for the more pretentious Lost in Translation is just a belated remedy to his snub for Groundhog Day (and also Rushmore, another under-appreciated work from Bill Murray)
It is possible that the filmmaker never intended the movie to be anything more than a romantic comedy with a fantasy twist to it. Regardless, audience has read many different philosophies into the premise of Groundhog Day: when Phil rhetorically asked an acquaintance ‘what would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?’, ‘That about sum it up for me’ was the cynical reply and I am sure many audience will concur. For there is a Groundhog Day in each of us and like Phil we are forced to confront the meaning of life when it appears to be just an endless repetition of routines with no consequence. It is this element of existentialism that elevates Groundhog Day from a mere comedy to a cult favorite over the years. It is also one of the few Hollywood movies that received a remake treatment from Europe, reincarnated as È già ieri (literally it means It's Already Yesterday):
European movies have always prided themselves to be more original than their Hollywood counterpart. However, in a rare reversal of norm, an Italian remake of Groundhog Day was filmed in 2004. Briefly showed in some isolated art house theaters in US under the name Stork Day, È già ieri retold the story with Italian TV personality Filippo who was sent to make a documentary about storks in Tenerife, one of the seven Canary Islands archipelagos that belong to Spain. However, after the filming wrapped, the ferry that supposed to take the crew back to civilization broke down and everyone has to return back to the island, thus accounted for the stranded element in the original tale. I have never watched È già ieri but instead of a gray, little east coast town in gloomy winter, Tenerife is actually a sunny, tropical paradise that attracts over five million tourists each year. A lot of convincing the movie will need to do if trapping there is meant to be a curse, the Bossa Nova flavored score certainly doesn’t help.
Bill Murray became famous along with Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, John Belushi, Jane Curtin and Chevy Chase as the original cast members of the phenomenally popular sketch comedy show Saturday Night Live (SNL) during the late 70s. The success of the show allowed Murray to spill over to a movie career and propelled him to a huge box office star with a string of hits like Meatballs (1979), Caddyshack (1980), Stripes (1981), Tootsie (1982), Scrooged (1988), peaking with one of the quintessential 80s blockbusters, Ghostbusters (1984). Groundhog Day continued his winning streak when it became the tenth highest domestically grossed movie of 1993 (Wikipedia said thirteenth but that is only because it was based on the final gross instead of the year-end gross, notice that three movies ahead of it, The Pelican Brief, Schindler’s List and Philadelphia, were released in the last weeks of 1993 and so technically it hadn’t passed Groundhog Day when the year ended)
However, Bill Murray has never been a box office draw in Hong Kong partly because SNL didn't have the same kind of impact there. A search in Internet revealed that Groundhog Day was released under the generic title 《偷天情緣》 in Hong Kong during late 1993 and grossed a mere HK$ 1.25 million, ranked 174 out of 380 released that year. Ranked number one was 《侏羅紀公園》(Jurassic Park) with the then record-breaking gross HK$ 61.9 million. Comparing with a special effect galore is of course unfair, but even measuring against the similar genre 《緣份的天空》 (Sleepless In Seattle) Groundhog Day still appeared to be under-performing when it only grossed one ninth of the former even though it definitely is a much better movie than the sappy Meg Ryan yarn. A common trait among cult movies is that they tend to get overlooked during initial release. Maybe it was high time for you to rediscover this lost gem in this Groundhog/Valentine's Day season
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