GROUNDHOG DAY

   Film (1993). Columbia. Dir and co-prod Harold Ramis; screenplay Danny Rubin and Ramis, based on a story by Rubin; starring Bill Murray, Andie MacDowell,Chris Elliott. 101 mins. Colour.

   Phil Connors (Murray) is a cynical and unhappy tv weatherman, dejected at having to cover for the fifth time the annual Groundhog Day ceremony in the small town of Punxsutawney. The groundhog predicts six more weeks of winter, and indeedthe tv crew is snowed in that night. When Connors wakes next morning, it is for him the same day - Groundhog Day - in Punxsutawney all over again. And again, after he has gone to bed, the next day. And again for a verylong time. Although most people take the film as fantasy, the idea of a day endlessly repeated in a time loop is actually quite familiar in genre sf. The difference here is that Connors has free will, and can do with the day what he likes. At first he is irresponsible, later suicidal. He oscillates between nasty and smarmy nice. He attempts (unsuccessfully) to seduce his idealistic producer Rita Hanson (MacDowell) by learning all about what she likes and dislikes over a long series of the same day. What makes the film wonderful is the absolute integrity with which the ramifications of the simple idea are explored, and the crispness of the editing and performances throughout. It becomes clear that the day will go on forever unless, perhaps, Connors learns how to get the day right. It is quite astonishingly well made, for it could so easily have gone wrong; the subtle differences-all catalysed by Connors-from day to day are superbly rendered and quite gripping. Ideas of death darkly interpose themselves between Connors and his infinitely slow learning process,itself a kind of metaphor for real life. It is not even a simple story of redemption, for some of Connors' unpleasantness remains, mercifully, intact at the end, and it is arguable that he finally gets the day right more out of the pressure of tedium than because he has learned to love this simple (but kind of boring) town. No one will ever make a better-or funnier-time loop film than this. It should have won a HUGO, but it was JURASSIC PARK year.

   PN