Cinema Scene
Groundhog's Day By Brother Initiate Lee Shuen Shiang, Taipei, Formosa

What if everyday we woke up to find that today is just the carbon copy of yesterday? What if time stopped running and repeated itself again and again like a malfunctioning record player? This is the theme of the movie " Groundhog Day " .

Phil was a selfish, narrow-mined, unhappy middle-aged weatherman working for a television station. One day, towards the end of winter, he went to a little town in Pennsylvania to cover an annual event called Groundhog Day. All he wished was to get the job over with, but somehow he got stuck with it, not because an approaching blizzard prevented him from getting home but because the next day when he woke up in the hotel he discovered that it was still Groundhog Day and was exactly the same as the day before. Things took place at precisely the same time, even to the second. What is worse, he was the only one that knew about this; all the other people were totally unaware, living and reliving that day the way they had before.

After a short period of perplexity, he realized what was going on. He understood everything would start all over again tomorrow no matter what he did today. That was when he began to be nasty. He got himself acquainted with the local bank's schedule so that he could steal money and spent it all like crazy. He practiced, again and again, to seduce his female colleague who had never liked him. After all this mischief, however, he got bored, so he began killing himself, in one way after another. But no matter how he ended his life, the next morning when his alarm clock rang, it was still the same Groundhog Day.

Since nothing would be left over except the memory and the skills learnt the previous day, he began to change the way he lived life. He took piano lessons, learnt how to fix a car, and tried to know every resident in town to compensate for his imperfect life. After repeated experiences, he learnt when he should reach out his arms for a boy falling from a tree. He got to know when an old starving wanderer would die and let him have a very good meal before his very last breath. He opened his heart and assisted the whole town. In return, he received people's warmhearted welcome and gratitude. Finally, when he learnt to live the day as perfectly as he could, time started rolling again. Subsequently, a warm holiday, yet a long learning process eventually came to an end.

Although this film is a comedy it is quite thought provoking. It depicts an extreme situation as a way to reexamine an old issue - the human conscience. The writer does not take it for granted that man is born with a heart of gold. Instead, he emphasizes that a meaningful life is based on the choices we make. In a wild, fanciful way the film exposes the fallacy of time because time is indeed a strange thing. We never know how much longer we will live, but the " future " in our imagination always seems like eternity, driving us on and on in an endless circle like a mule working at a mill.

The blind actions of human beings are almost always based on this illusory concept of time. The fulfillment of desire, the procurement of fame, and the pursuit of wealth thus become unquestionable. All their glamour resides in our belief that we can still enjoy things tomorrow. As the film's character was faced with the ephemeral reality that he lived in, he had to admit that these were not what he really wanted.

By default or design, the recurring Groundhog Day existentially parallels the concepts of reincarnation and the Myth of Sisyphus. It suggests that boredom arouses detachment and offers the only chance for wisdom to grow. The concepts of ephemerality and diligence, incompatible as they may seem, are fused together in a most poignant way. Perhaps the issue the writer wanted to raise is whether there any difference between what we go through in our lives and what Phil goes through in Groundhog Day?