A perfect example of the Venus archetype on film can be found in Groundhog Day, the 30-year-old romcom staring Bill Murray doing his deadpan charm thing. Like any good film, it explores lots of subjects including love, relationships, desire and values, identity, community, and reincarnation. It’s filled with philosophical insights and has become known as a Buddhist movie, although it was never written that way.

The film works as a kind of fable or fairy tale where the main character gets stuck in a time loop and repeats the same day over and over. There’s no cause for this strange situation – it just happens – and the phrase ‘groundhog day’ has almost become a cliché to describe tedious repetitive situations, such as the last few years. 🙄

Before we go any further, here’s the obligatory SPOILER WARNING!!…

The story follows TV weatherman Phil Connors on his trip to the small town of Punxsutawney to cover the annual event of Groundhog Day on 2nd February. He’s accompanied by Rita Hanson, the new producer of the show, and Larry, the long-suffering cameraman. Phil has covered this event for three years in a row and isn’t looking forward to doing it again.

The groundhog is a hibernating rodent, also called Phil, who predicts when spring will arrive. If he wakes and sees his own shadow, because it’s sunny, it means there’ll be another six weeks of winter.

On the first morning, Phil (the man) wakes up at 6 a.m. to Sonny and Cher’s I Got You Babe playing on the radio. The DJs announce that it’s Groundhog Day and speculate about the weather. Phil goes through the motions and takes the piss out of everything and can’t wait to leave. He hates the town and the people and thinks it’s all beneath him.

But then a blizzard rolls in and engulfs the town, forcing Phil to stay another night. When he wakes the next morning, the same song is playing on the radio and the DJs say the same phrases. Phil thinks they’re playing the wrong tape but then realises the snow has gone and everything else is repeating in exactly the same way as before. The time loop has begun.

The script of Groundhog Day was written using a structure loosely based on Elizabeth Kubler-Ross’ five stages of death and dying: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, and finally Acceptance. Phil goes through these stages as he tries to understand what’s happening to him and the events in the time loop change as he changes.

At first, he’s in denial and thinks he might be going mad or have a brain tumour. He gets angry with people for repeating themselves and tries to avoid them or aggressively pushes them away. Everything he does reinforces his worst qualities. It’s the worst day of his life to repeat because it contains everything that he hates and he can’t escape – from the day or from himself.

Phil is arrogant, narcissistic and egocentric and keeps other people at a distance using sarcasm and cynical humour. He does have a kind of charm which comes to the fore later as he changes. But he starts out as emotionally immature, an overgrown boy who seems bored with life and doesn’t even like himself. To drown his sorrows he goes drinking with two men from the town and asks:

“What would you do if you were stuck in one place and every day was exactly the same and nothing you did mattered?”

One of the men recognises the problem and replies, “That about sums it up for me.”

But then Phil realises that if there’s no tomorrow, there are no consequences and he can do whatever he wants. He can use the time loop to get what he wants for himself and doesn’t have to worry about anybody else. This is the bargaining stage where he behaves like a teenager and indulges every whim and desire.

He punches Ned, the annoying insurance salesman, stuffs himself with cake, steals money from a security van, and gathers intimate details about women so he can seduce them. Over multiple loops he builds a picture of Rita’s likes and dislikes and what she’s looking for in a man. He tries to impress her and pretends to want the same things that she wants. But he’s manipulating her and pushing too hard and it always ends the same way – she slaps him.

Phil gets depressed. No matter what he does, he can’t get what he really wants. He lashes out at everyone around him and predicts that the winter is going to be cold and grey and last for the rest of his life. He destroys the clock every morning but it doesn’t stop the loop and he spirals into despair, trapped in purgatory.

He tries to kill himself but that doesn’t work either. He kidnaps the groundhog and drives it off a cliff into a quarry. He drops a toaster into the bath, making sure to lower the bread into the slots first! He gets hit by a truck, and jumps off a high building. He dies over and over but keeps coming back.

After a while, Phil starts to believe that he’s immortal and claims to be a god. He tries to impress Rita with all the knowledge he has of the town and its people, and shares what he knows about her. They finally have a great day together but he explains that she won’t remember and tomorrow she’ll treat him like a jerk again. But he says that’s okay because he is a jerk.

Phil is starting to change and develop self-awareness. He says he’s killed himself so many times that he doesn’t even exist anymore. Like the groundhog, he’s hibernating and waiting for spring, for new life and a new beginning. To come back to life he needs to confront his shadow, the part of himself that contains all the positive and hopeful qualities that he claims to despise.

We normally think of the shadow as being something dark and scary but it also contains the light, especially if our conscious self is identified with negativity. Phil doesn’t like other people because deep down he doesn’t really like or value himself. He doesn’t take anything seriously because he doesn’t believe it matters so he has no real enjoyment of life.

Underneath this nihilism there’s a huge well of despair – or at least world-weariness – that hides something worse. Phil is afraid of love and intimacy and connection because it makes him vulnerable. He doesn’t want to care about anyone because it might hurt or he might lose them. His arrogance is a mask that hides his inner emptiness.

Rita embodies the life-affirming qualities that he denies in himself which is why he rejected her at first. He needs her to balance himself out and find his lost soul which is why he feels drawn to her despite his initial disdain.

He finally allows himself a moment of vulnerability and admits that he doesn’t deserve someone as good as Rita. He swears that if he could, he would love her for the rest of his life. But to do this, he must break the loop.

The death of his old ego isn’t enough to stop the time loop and it resets again in the morning. But now Phil knows that he is the problem, not other people, and that he needs to change. He starts to focus on helping others with small acts of kindness. He gives money to the tramp he’s been ignoring, and brings coffee to Rita and Larry, and even asks Larry’s opinion for the first time.

Rather than indulging himself or wallowing in despair, he starts trying to become a better person. He learns French poetry and how to play the piano and do ice sculptures – perhaps to win Rita’s love. But his attitude has changed and now he enjoys being in the town and getting to know the residents and begins to care about their lives.

He repeatedly catches a boy who falls out of a tree despite the fact that the boy never says thank you. And when he discovers that the tramp dies at the end of the day, Phil decides to save his life. Over multiple loops he buys him food and takes care of him, but nothing he does works and the tramp dies anyway.

Watching this man suffer teaches Phil compassion and softens his heart. His speech to camera at the groundhog ceremony becomes warmer and more sincere and he says he can’t imagine a better fate than a long winter in the town. He has finally learned the importance of being present and enjoying life, no matter what happens.

Rita notices that he’s changed and starts to take an interest in him. But Phil has other responsibilities to the people of the town and he doesn’t want to let them down. He seems less motivated by winning her love and more interested in doing good for its own sake. He has taken the worst day of his life and turned it into the best day by changing himself.

Phil breaks the time loop by learning how to love. He tells Rita that no matter what happens tomorrow and for the rest of his life, he’s happy now in this moment because he loves her. He has found happiness by accepting life as it is and by opening his heart and becoming a person worthy of love.

The time loop that Phil gets trapped in can be seen as a metaphor for reincarnation and the cycle of rebirth in samsara. We’re all stuck in loops of various kinds, ruts and repetitive habits that cause suffering, bound to our own wheels going round and round. In Buddhism, the idea is to free yourself from the wheel of suffering by overcoming your desire nature and remembering who you really are – a little Buddha in disguise.

This problem is stated in the Four Noble Truths (in a nutshell):

1. Life is suffering (impermanence)
2. You suffer because of desire (attachment and aversion)
3. There’s a way to free yourself from this suffering
4. The way to freedom is the Eightfold Path

There’s obviously a lot more to it than this and you can go deeper here: The foundational teachings of Buddhism and the Eightfold Path.

In essence, we suffer because we don’t realise that we’re interconnected with the whole of life. We cut ourselves off from this wider reality and that makes us feel vulnerable so we try to compensate by clinging to what we like and avoiding what we hate. This makes our suffering worse and we go in circles trying to make ourselves feel better – just like Phil.

And like Phil, you will continue to suffer until you wake up to your true nature and break the cycle. Doing this requires self-mastery because you have to overcome attachment to following your lower desires and instincts and reintegrate your shadow.

Most of us try to make ourselves happy the same way that Phil does. We chase after the things and people we desire because we believe it’ll make us happy. This may even work for a while. But real happiness can’t depend on getting things or people from outside because you can’t control them – and if you try to control them you piss people off.

Real happiness comes from within – and then every moment can be enjoyed as it is and samsara can be recognised as nirvana.

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