An Unquiet Mind

Watched Ground­hog Day (again) on TV a few days back, one of my beloved movies.

Ground­hog Day is about Phil (Bill Mur­ray), a TV weath­er­man, who vis­its Punx­sutawney, for the tra­di­tional Feb 2nd Ground­hog Day fes­ti­val. Phil is a self-absorbed man, snob­bish, and unfriendly. He finds every­one to be a dim-witted stereo­type, and hates going to the Ground­hog Day fes­ti­val for the 4th time. An attempt to escape from Punx­sutawney imme­di­ately after the fes­tiv­i­ties are over is ham­pered by a bliz­zard. Dis­s­ap­pointed, he has to spend the night in the same hotel.

To his utter sur­prise and despair, when he gets up the next morn­ing, it’s still Feb 2nd, Ground­hog Day, all over again. He meets the same peo­ple on his way to the square where the fes­tiv­i­ties are hap­pen­ing as if for the first time. Other than him, every­one thinks and acts as if this is nor­mal for them, as if this is the first Feb 2nd of the year.

This hap­pens about 20–30 min­utes into the movie, and then things start to get really inter­est­ing. He spends the day in much the same way, find­ing the same things hap­pen­ing to him­self and oth­ers, and retires at night. Only to find it being Ground­hog Day even the next day, and so on, and on.

His frus­tra­tion and des­per­a­tion lead to inter­est­ing inter­ac­tions with his pro­ducer Rita (Andie Mac­Dow­ell), whom he tries to explain what’s hap­pen­ing, in vain. A brain scan and visit to the couch fol­lows with the same result. His social inter­ac­tions take inter­est­ing turns and twists. He asks a young woman about her high-school and 12th grade Eng­lish teacher, and the ‘next’ day, pre­tends to be her class­mate, and ulti­mately, takes her to bed. After booz­ing with locals at a bar, he takes them on a dare-devil ride on a rail­way track.

Real­iz­ing he can­not get out of this ‘time lock’ until some­thing changes dras­ti­cally, he steals the Ground­hog, and dri­ves deep down a sui­ci­dal canyon. There are sev­eral other attempts to die. He does die, but his ‘next’ day starts the same.

All this while, he real­izes that what he really wants, is to ‘have’ Rita. Elab­o­rate attempts of his manip­u­la­tion in find­ing out about her and then ‘using’ that to get closer to her, don’t work. He is not being truth­ful — nei­ther to her, nor to himself.

By this time, the movie is already worth the ticket. There are plenty of amus­ing laughs and smart-liners to keep you hooked. Then, there’s the turn­ing point. Slowly, enlight­en­ment dawns on Phil. He starts see­ing things and peo­ple in a dif­fer­ent way.

What hap­pens next? Does Phil get out of the time lock? Do Rita and Phil get together? Watch the movie to find out!

There is so much to learn from this sim­ple, yet pro­found movie! Apart from sim­ple human­i­tar­i­an­ism, there’s also self-discovery, per­sonal growth, and self-development. The movie makes you think, period.

George Fenton’s music is pleas­ant through­out, while Jazz fre­quently pro­vides a wel­come inter­lude. The edit­ing is great — some of the scenes that are repeated over and over for many days are espe­cially a worth­while study. They start with the exact same dia­logue and exact same expres­sions, and then evolve dif­fer­ently as days go by, with­out any vis­i­ble ‘cuts’. This is very skill­fully achieved.

Bill Mur­ray and Andie Mac­Dow­ell do a great job as well. I don’t like Andie much, and this is the only movie where I’ve liked her. Bill has never dis­ap­pointed, and always enter­tains. His tim­ing is impeccable.

Over­all, the movie strikes the right bal­ance between pure enter­tain­ment and mak­ing you think about things.

Main Cast: Bill Mur­ray, Andie Mac­Dow­ell
Music: George Fen­ton
Direc­tion: Harold Ramis
IMDB: Link
Review Rat­ing: None. I don’t think it’s worth my while writ­ing or your read­ing, about movies that I wouldn’t rec­om­mend very highly!

Related posts:

1. One way ticket
2. TV Ad Break Intervals
3. Round and Round
4. Review and Rat­ing for An Unquiet Mind