Determinism In The Film Groundhog Day

In the film Groundhog Day, Phil Connors, a pompous TV meteorologist, who amid a detested task of covering the yearly Groundhog Day cannot wait to return to Pittsburgh, yet trapped by a blizzard that he neglected to foresee, he and his crew must remain one more night in Punxsutawney. When he awakes the following morning, Phil discovers much to his dismay that it is February 2nd once more. Soon, he finds that regardless of what he does, each morning he wakes up at the same time, in the same bed of the same hotel room, on the same day. However, in the wake of entertaining himself in various pursuits, he eventually comes to the acknowledgment that he could be bound to spend eternity reliving the same day unendingly and in this way begins to reconsider …show more content…
Thus, the concept of determinism that this film raises is that Phil is completely helpless in escaping his least favorite day and his environment remains more or less definite throughout the repeating day, to the point where he has approximately everything people say and do memorized. In the following twenty-four hours he knows he is condemned to begin the entire day once more as soon as that day has run its course. In this regard, he does not seem to have any free will. The decision of regardless of whether he is permitted to move onto the following day lies with a higher power since determinism maintains that humans have no influence on the future and its …show more content…
He is not obligated to do or say precisely what he did or said the day before; his actions are not determined. In one scene, Phil is outside a bowling alley with two locals and he asked them, “What if there were no tomorrow?” One guy answers, “That would mean there will be no consequences, there will be no hangovers, we could do whatever we wanted.” With the mindset that he can live without consequences, Phil punches his former classmate in the face, impersonate Nancy’s former classmate in order to entice her, commits burglary, attempts suicide various times, and kidnaps Punxsutawney Phil. In other words, he finds himself with the advantage of acting distinctively toward everyone every time. In this way, the film deals with the nature of free will. Free will, the idea that we are able to have some choice in how we act and assume that we are free to choose our behavior. However, even Phil overlooks that he is not by any means the only one equipped of changing from day to day. While making a snowman with Rita for the countless time, he assumes the series of events to go generally as it had before: children toss snowballs at them, they reciprocate jokingly and in a way which reveals Phil 's playful side, and they wind up growing closer. However, after encountering this scene various times, Phil 's reaction is no longer genuine, and Rita takes notice,