Eternal Recurrence and Groundhog Day (3/4)

This is Part 3 in a series examining Friedrich Nietzsche’s concept of eternal recurrence through film and literature. Expect spoilers.

Edge of Tomorrow was a good movie, but I felt like its charm began to wear off during the final act. A movie whose charm never wears off is the romantic comedy Groundhog Day (1993), in which Bill Murray’s character Phil finds himself repeating the same day over and over until he wins the love of Rita, played by Andie McDowell.

 

Much like Major Cage in Edge of Tomorrow, Phil learns to be a better person--not tougher, but kinder and happier. In his old, bitter life, he was a cynic, a life-denier, a negater of the hustle and bustle around him. In Freudian terms, he had a strong death drive urging him toward destructive and self-destructive behavior. This reaches its most morbid point when he repeatedly attempts suicide.

Again, Nietzsche’s ideas clump, for eternal recurrence is closely related to his concept of amor fati. This phrase literally means the love of fate, but it is also the love of all (previous post). For Nietzsche, everything is “anew, everything eternal, everything chained, entwined together, everything in love” (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), so that to want the good in life, you must also want the bad. Once you can do that, you have something akin to what John Coltrane called a love supreme, only no god necessary.

Then you are an affirmer of life, as indeed Nietzsche tried to be. In The Gay Science, he states his New Year’s resolution:

 

Amor fati: may that be my love from now on! I want to wage no war against the ugly. I do not want to accuse, I do not want even to accuse the accusers. May looking away be my only form of negation! And, all in all: I want to be at all times hereafter only an affirmer!

Reviewing Nietzsche recently, I was surprised at how many selections by translator R. J. Hollingdale in A Nietzsche Reader focus on joy. One of my favorites, from Thus Spoke Zarathustra, is fine enough in English but must be even better in the original German:

All joy wants the eternity of all things, wants honey, wants dregs, wants intoxicated midnight, wants graves, wants the consolation of graveside tears, wants gilded sunsets, what does joy not want!

In Groundhog Day, joy is precisely what Phil finds. After dreading what promises to be a dull eternity in Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, he begins to help people, make friends, and have a little fun. He learns to play a mean piano, masters 19th-Century French poetry, and perfects the art of ice sculpture. After finally winning Rita’s heart, Phil’s recurrence proves--like Ebenezer Scrooge’s similar experience in A Christmas Carol--to have been temporary but life-changing, and he finally moves from February 2 to February 3, a gayer spirit with a new lust for life.

 

Previous posts in this series:
Eternal Recurrence and Nietzsche (1/4)
Eternal Recurrence and Edge of Tomorrow (2/4)