I love the movie Groundhog Day — it popped up in several of my philosophy classes in college, and again in law school. The Library of Congress has a copy archived, because the movie is a significant cultural work. Phil spends years trapped in a time loop, but the movie never specifies how many. I just read the most definitive deconstruction of it:
The first stage is to work out how many separate days are shown on screen during the movie. So here’s a good old-fashioned list of them:
- Day 1: Groundhog Day
- Day 2: The first repetition
- Day 3: The fixed pencil
- Day 4: Punching Ned
- Day 5: Deceiving Nancy
- Day 6: Robbing the bank
- Day 7: Seeing Heidi 2 with a French Maid
- Days 8-12: Engineering the near-perfect date
- Day 13: The bad perfect date
- Days 14-21: One for every slap
- Day 22: “Phil you look terrible!”
- Day 23: Jeopardy
- Day 24: “This is pitiful!”
- Days 25-27: Breaking the alarm clock
- Day 28: Kidnapping Punxsutawney Phil
- Day 29-31: Phil’s suicides
- Day 32: I’m a God!
- Days 33- 35: First piano lessons
- Day 36: Sexually harassing Ned
- Day 37: Looking after the homeless man
- Day 38: The final Groundhog Day
Read the rest at Obsessed With Film.