Pal, you got that moisture on your head! **updated**
This isn't a real update exactly, I just added a comment after several weeks of silence and I didn't want it to go unnoticed. To somewhat justify the update I wanted to add a picture, and while I was looking for one I came across this spanish blog. I was curious to see what this person had to say so I ran it through the AltaVista Translator. The translation was pretty sharp in my opinion, in a Super Karate Monkey Death Car sort of way, so here it is for your enjoyment.
This is laborious, thousands of personnel freezing the ass are hoping to adore a rat. That triviality. The day of marmota used to mean something in this town, used to remove marmota and used to eat it to it. You are hypocrites! All! [... ] If they want a prediction about the time asks to him the mistaken Phil. I will give a prediction them of the winter. He is going to be cold. He is going to be gray. And he is going to last the rest to them of his life.
When Chéjov saw the long winter, it saw an inhospitable and dark winter, hopelessly. But we know that the winter another step in the cycle of the life is single more. Being here, between the people of Punxsutawney, enjoying the heat its homes and their hearts, could not imagine a luck better than a length and beautiful winter.
****
"Rita, I'm reliving the same day over and over. Groundhog Day. Today."I was listening to the audio from Groundhog Day on my iPod yesterday while at work (Thanks to DVD Audio Ripper). And while doing that I wondered something I've wondered several times before. As far as all the other characters are concerned, is that day actually happening?
"Ok, I'm waiting for the punchline."
"NO. Really. This is the third time. It's like yesterday never happened."
In my opinion, there are two possibilities. Put simply, either it did or it didn't. (Profound, I know.) If it didn't happen, then in reality, everyone in the movie is repeating the same day over and over and Phil is the only one that realizes what's going on. Take the scene with Gus and Ralph for instance. After they knock over the mailbox, lead the police along the railroad tracks, crash the car and order flapjacks, all three of them end up in jail. The next morning when Phil wakes up he's back in his room and it's Groundhog Day again. What of Gus and Ralph? Did they wake up still in the jail cell, or are they back at their homes too (on Groundhog Day again), completely unaware of what happened? Phil obviously didn't have to live with the consequences of his actions, do any of the others have to live with them?
If you look at it like Sliding Doors, then each day that Phil experiences is spawning an alternate reality. Personally I think this is the more interesting of the two possibilities. If you carry the idea further then each day is spawning an infinite number of alternate realities based on whatever choices/decisions/actions everyone is making. And for some reason Phil is stuck in this particular day and cannot continue even though everyone else is. [One question this brings up is where is Phil in all these alternate realities? In the instances where he dies or kills himself it's not an issue, but otherwise does he exist in those realities? Does he mysteriously vanish?]
Or, reality is a straight line and everyone is repeating the day but Phil is the only one who knows it. In the end it doesn't matter, so here's this picture.
What blizzard?? It's a couple of flakes!
7 Comments:
Your theory of each new Groundhog Day spawning an alternate reality is intriguing. I would like to discuss some evidence in support of this hypothesis. (Though I have seen the film more than a fair share of times, I haven't seen it recently, so forgive my oversights where you may find them.)
If time is cyclical, the events of Groundhog Day may be explained using a black hole postulate. If time and space collided at 5:59 AM, February 3, and--somehow--Phil managed to escape the information that was "lost" into the black hole, then he would continue to repeat the same day over and over again, as the former elements of time would no longer exist. When Hawking conceded that information could, in fact, not be lost in a black hole, he speculated that said information may actually transmitted into a parallel universe, thusly spawning an alternate reality. Therefore, every morning at the event horizon, each recurrent day would collapse into a singularity and continue to exist in a parallel universe. It has always seemed apparent that Phil *escapes* the surly clutches of the Groundhog Day continuum by attaining a point of total self-discovery when, in fact, viewed against the black hole theory, this would have simply been a humorous, if not enlightening, coincidence--being that the end of the continuum was simply a point in which time and space, for some reason, were no longer affected by the black hole.
I have no explanation for how Phil manages to escape being reduced to a singularity, aside from the speculation that his person must be composed of an undue amount of dark matter, therefore impervious to the effects of a black hole.
This, of course, would mean that the events after each instance of Groundhog Day--except the last one--would continue in an alternate reality devoid of Phil Connors.
The only evidence that would suggest otherwise is the fact that each occurrence of Groundhog Day does not account much, if at all, for free will; that is, if we are to assume that each day, every event we can see or are told about happens in precisely the same way, the only way reality may be altered is by Phil's intervention. For example, think about how many times the boy falling from the tree snapped his spine before Phil's intercession--I believe we are to assume this event cannot change. A pretty grim view of causality, I agree, but several events of the film seem to suggest it.
I've been working on this comment for so long, I've forgotten where I was going with it, so here's this very apropos quote:
"Maybe God isn't omnipotent. Maybe he's just been around so long, he knows everything."
This is one of my favorite movies of all time. Never in all the years I've enjoyed this movie have I ventured down the path that you guys have in regards to the underlying theory behind Phil's conundrum. Absolutely brilliant. I enjoyed reading it. I guess I'll join in the quote game as well.
"This is one time where television really fails to capture the true excitement of a large squirrel predicting the weather."
I'm surprised at your silence in response to this topic.
That is all.
Too late for a response on this topic?
I'm not particularly well-versed in black hole lore, but your comments, Drew, were insightful nonetheless. I'm not sure if it was your intention, but I've now been pondering the idea of Phil actually time travelling, rather than time repeating itself as a whole, or time being cyclical.
I guess this still points to two possibilities:
1) At 6am on February 3rd, Phil travels 24 hours back in time. He does this quite involuntarily and at first he does it unknowingly. There's really no explanation for how he's doing this, nor why it stops when he attains total awareness of self. But as anyone with a basic understanding of time travel can tell you (i.e. anyone who's seen Bob Zemeckis' classic Back to the Future trilogy), time travelling in this manner spawns alternate universes. Since Phil apparently has no means to travel forward in time, all of these parallel universes are "devoid of Phil Connors".
2)More confusingly, Phil isn't travelling back in time, but everyone else is. This option makes almost no sense, because Phil is the only one whose actions vary through each iteration of Groundhog Day. However, this is the option that I think would have to be true to avoid the alternate realities being generated.
In the end, I think my remarks here have added nothing. But I wasn't ready to abandon the topic.
Too early for flapjacks?
Man, after the thought I put into the first comment, I find your comment to be somewhat sterile.
The only question I have for you is about your statement, ...as anyone with a basic understanding of time travel can tell you (i.e. anyone who's seen Bob Zemeckis' classic Back to the Future trilogy), time travelling in this manner spawns alternate universes.... To what does time traveling in "this manner" refer? Also, I don't remember any of the "Back to the Future" movies suggesting that time travel necessarily spawns an alternate universe. I found quite the opposite to be true; the story seems to suggest time is linear (i.e., no alternate realities) and time travel allows the time traveler to manipulate the past of one timeline. I point to instances in which Marty "Nobody calls me chicken" McFly manipulates an event in the past and time is simultaneously altered to reflect such change.
Now that I think about it, I'm sure that the "Back to the Future" trilogy storyline actually demands that time traveling cannot spawn alternate realities.
Wait... I think you just said that to reinforce a spurious remark.
Reveal yourself!
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Sounds like somebody needs to re-watch Back to the Future II.
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