If talking about Groundhog Day as a concept automatically leads to thinking about a day that repeats itself over and over again – although that is not even the meaning of the date – it is thanks to
Trapped in Time
(1993), one of the most influential comedies of recent decades.
The film followed the misadventures of a surly meteorologist, played by Bill Murray, who was sent to broadcast from the town of Punxstawnwey (Pennsylvania) the great local event every February 2: the day when, according to native folklore, the groundhog Phil predicts how long the winter will be based on whether or not he sees his shadow when he emerges from the burrow in the morning.
Once the work was finished, the protagonist was forced to spend the night in the place due to bad weather.
To his horror, the next day was February 2 again, without anyone else except him noticing.
And the next, again.
And the next.
And so on an indefinite number of times.
Directed by Harold Ramis,
Trapped in Time
became an instant classic and spawned a good number, still growing, of films with the same narrative mold:
Edge of Tomorrow
(2014),
Happy Death Day
(2017),
Palm Springs
(2020)... And it also became an inexhaustible source of analysis, theories and all types of literature, from which the recently published
Prisoners of the Loop
(Applehead Team) now emanates, an essay where journalists and film critics Santiago Alonso and Isabel Sánchez delve into the keys that made that comedy a cultural phenomenon.
“It's sobering to think that a film from only 30 years ago has given rise to so many others that copy it or are based on it.
There was something to investigate,” Alonso tells ICON.
For the co-author, the reasons for its validity are clear: “It is due to the philosophical depth of its topic.
Any viewer feels identified and is hooked on his existentialist perspective.
And, above all, the idea of its argument is great.”
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In one of the scenes of the film, the protagonist shared his affliction with the patrons of a bowling alley and, after asking them what they would do if their life was stuck in a place where every day is the same and nothing you do matters, One responded: “It's the summary of my life.”
“In middle age, we often get bored with our own lives, it seems like we are repeating the next day over and over again,” reflects Isabel Sánchez.
The writer admits that what interested her most about the comedy is its nature as a fantastic love story through time, in the orbit of classic films such as
Life or Death
(1946),
The Ghost and Mrs. Muir
(1947) or
Jennie
(1949).
After all, the role of Rita, the producer to whom Andie MacDowell gives a face, is essential for the protagonist's transformation.
“When Rita tells her how she would be her perfect man, she, without knowing it, is becoming her guide and drawing her a map,” explains the journalist.
She “makes him realize that he is an asshole but she can make a path to become better, to see that life can be something else and to learn to enjoy it in community.”
Bill Murray and Andie MacDowell in a scene from 'Trapped in Time'.Archive Photos (Getty Images)
Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell and Chris Elliott in 'Trapped in Time'.
/ Cord Press
Prisoners of the Loop
is made up of a first part dedicated to the production of the film, a second about the literary and cinematographic background and its philosophical interpretations, and a third where the two authors dialogue about other titles about time loops.
Jon Mikel Caballero, director of one of the aforementioned films, the Spanish film
The Incredible Menguante Weekend
(2019), participates in the book with a final interview, as well as the screenwriter of
Atrapado en el tiempo
, Danny Rubin.
The Californian playwright says that the idea for the story came to him from the novel
Lestat the Vampire
(1985), by Anne Rice.
“The universe Rice had created included people who were exactly like us, except in a few things.
One of them, that they were always the same age and lived forever.
That's what I started thinking about that day,” Rubin clarifies in the book.
The film was a huge box office success in 1993 but also marked the end of the friendship and collaborations between Harold Ramis and Bill Murray.
Both had worked together on
The Incorrigible Meatballs
(1979),
The Crazy Club
(1980) and
The Ghostbusters
(1984), films that contributed to transforming the codes of American comedy of their time.
However, Murray's stress over his divorce during the filming of
Time Trap
and the creative differences between the two partners (apparently Murray, looking for a career turn, advocated for the more tragic original version of Rubin's script , while Ramis turned it into a romantic comedy) created an unbreathable atmosphere.
According to the book
How to be Bill Murray
(Gavin Edwards, 2016), the actor withdrew Ramis from speaking and hired a deaf-mute interpreter to mediate between the two using sign language.
They did not speak again until Murray decided to visit the terminally ill filmmaker shortly before his death in 2014.
Original poster for 'Trapped in Time'.
/ Cord Press
“It was always said that, of the two, Bill Murray was the one who threw the map out the window and Harold Ramis was the one who looked for a way to get home,” says Isabel Sánchez.
“That's why they worked so well as a duo, one was chaos and the other was order.”
For Santiago Alonso, “it is not worth it” to think about what the film would have been like if that more dramatic vision that the screenwriter and Murray initially advocated had been imposed: “What matters is what it was.
If one of the pieces of the conjunction had been different or entered in another way, perhaps we would not be talking about the film.”
Sanchez also vindicates Ramis and his sense of lightness: “he achieved a very difficult balance between comedy, romance and thematic depth.
Curiously, despite how light it appears to be, it has given philosophers, psychologists and all kinds of theorists much more to talk about than other more pretentious films.
The groundhog is Jesus Christ
Since the release of
Time Trap
, many fans have tried to determine how many years Bill Murray's character spends living on February 2nd.
Although the film only shows 38 different days, the information that the protagonist gives about everything he has done, together with the time it would take him to learn to sculpt ice, speak French or play piano at the level he demonstrates, recently led journalist Simon Gallagher to place their estimates at 33 years and 350 days.
Others have delved into his alleged religious subtext.
Danny Rubin received letters from monks or Kabbalah researchers who thought the screenwriter was one of them.
There are also those who have seen in the transformation of the character a reflection of the path of perfection of Saint Teresa of Ávila, based on the idea of progress from the contemplative life.
And then there is the critic and university professor Michael Bronski, who in 2004 argued: “The groundhog is clearly the risen Christ, the ever-hopeful renewal of life in spring.
And when I say that the groundhog is Jesus, I say it with great respect.”
Poster for 'Groundhog Day' (in the original, 'Groundhog Day') to celebrate, precisely, Groundhog Day on February 2, 2021 in Las Vegas. Ethan Miller (Getty Images)
Rabbi Niles Goldstein commented on the ending, when the protagonist is allowed to live outside the loop once he has become the best version of himself: “The film tells, as Judaism does, that the work is not finished until the world has been perfected.”
In
Prisoners of the Loop
, Santiago Alonso and Isabel Sánchez go back to other works that have dealt with the theme of time, self-improvement, and the existential trap.
A reference that stands out is that of Sisyphus, the character from Greek mythology condemned by the gods to push a large stone up a mountain, which would roll back down just before reaching the top, forcing him to repeat the process infinite times throughout eternity.
As the book states, the philosopher Albert Camus invited in
The Myth of Sisyphus
(1942) to imagine that the condemned man was happy, because, despite the fact that "the gods thought, with some reason, that there is no punishment more terrible than useless work and without hope”, Sisyphus still experienced freedom every hour he descended the mountain again.
“The film reflects a model of change that consists of abandoning oneself to the cyclical,” explains Santiago Alonso.
“Many people are afraid of the cyclical because of the feeling of not moving and always doing the same thing, but if you manage to change something in yourself and ride the loop, the perspective changes.”
Isabel Sánchez equates the film's outline with the theory of grief: “According to Elizabeth Kübler-Ross, the loss of a person is structured in five phases, denial, anger, negotiation, depression and acceptance.
"They are the steps that the character takes psychologically, someone with Peter Pan syndrome, who never thinks about anyone and does whatever he wants, who progressively acquires a new perception."
The screenwriter of 'Trapped in Time', Danny Rubin, and Bill Murray pose in New York in 2017.Bruce Glikas
The evocative influence of
Trapped in Time
goes further.
In 2016, director Cynthia Kao proposed in the short
Groundhog Day for a Black
Man
a denunciation of police racism
, by telling the story of a black man who, no matter what he did in the Every day he was trapped, he always ended up being killed by a police officer.
A premise that was also taken by the Oscar-winning medium-length film
Two Complete Strangers
(2020).
Not to mention other films also dedicated to exploring how a decision made in one day can alter an entire existence, a theme that ranges from Edgar Neville's Spanish classic
Life on a Thread
(1945), through
The Possible Lives of Mr. Nobody
(2009), until the recent premiere on Netflix last February of the series
Always the Same Day
, an adaptation of the 2009 book of the same name by David Nicholls, which shows what it is like every July 15 throughout the life of a boy and a girl. girl who meet at their graduation and like each other, but who take different paths.
“I really like stories that take place in a single day, with or without a loop.
Also in literature, such as
Mrs. Dalloway
[1925], by Virginia Woolf.
It is a way to concentrate an entire life and an entire person on how they live a day,” says Isabel Sánchez.
“You can't see what your life would be like every time you choose to do one thing or another, but art does open those possibilities to you.
That cliché phrase 'live each day as if it were your last' has some truth because, by chance or decision, any day can change your life."
By the way, Phil the groundhog has predicted that spring will come early this year.
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