Movie Lesson: Groundhog Day

Keyword
 * lesson
 * college (English majors)
 * ll_6 ll_7 ll_8 ll_9
 * 2hours_plus (4 hours -- two 2-hour lessons)
 * Pre-viewing activities/ viewing/ after viewing
 * China

The repetition in this film makes it relatively easy to understand. Many jokes are physical. Students will laugh, which is always a good thing.

Lesson originally by Linell Davis, May 22, 1999, Nanjing University English department; see talk page.

Pre-Viewing Activities
For culture, ask about traditional methods of forecasting the weather in China. Talk about attitudes of city people toward those who live in countryside.


 * 1) Groundhog Day is a folk belief (if the groundhog sees his shadow there will be 6 more weeks of winter) given new life in the television culture which dictates that the TV weatherman be a public relations agent and entertainer. Often required to appear at community events. He should be lovable. Phil means "love" in Greek, but this TV weatherman is anything but lovable.
 * 2) Town and city: Urbanites consider small towns boring, unsophisticated, backward, etc. while rural residents consider city dwellers to be selfish, insincere, unfeeling

For language, talk about weather words and feelings/moods.
 * 1) English has a large vocabulary to describe both the weather and personal feelings: gloomy, stormy ("He's looking really stormy today"); cold, cool, warm ("He has a very warm personality; the atmosphere in the meeting room was very cold), and hot (angry).
 * 2) This appears in sayings and songs: "Don't know why, there's no sun up in the sky Stormy weather, since my man and I ain't together, keeps raining all the time." "Blue skies, smiling at me. Nothing but blue skies do I see." "I can see clearly now, the rain has gone. I can see all the clouds have passed away."
 * 3) Phil Connors is a cold, selfish, egotistical man who finds himself condemned to live one cold winter day over and over until he becomes a better, kinder (warmer) person. Very often he seems to be talking about the weather when he is describing what it is like for him to live Feb. 2nd over and over: "It's gonna [going to] be cold; it's gonna be gray, and it's gonna last you for the rest of your life."
 * 4) If you subscribe to the Terry Avon school of EFL learning, you could have a contest on the pronunciation of Native American place names. Punxsatawney, Youghigheny, Monongahela, Piscataway. Get a gazeteer and have a ball. Or try tongue twisters: How much wood would a woodchuck (groundhog) chuck (throw) if a woodchuck could chuck wood?
 * 5) Meaning and use of "glass is half empty/half full"

Let students imagine what they would do "if there were no tomorrow."

When did you realize this was a comedy?
What do you see/hear in the first few minutes that tells you it is a comedy?
 * Music is cheerful
 * Shot of clouds and blue sky
 * Blue sky to TV studio backdrop trickery
 * Studio weatherman and weather map technological trickery
 * Phil's TV monologue and its jokes, "Out in California they are going to have some warm weather tomorrow, gang warfare, and some very over priced real estate. Out in the Pacific Northwest as you can see they're going to have some very tall trees"
 * Acting delivery, gestures, and timing
 * Trickery to get from TV station to the van on the road
 * "I'm your weatherman," dialogue in the van

Attempts to solve the problem
Practical attempts to solve the problem, which fail due to time/logic problems
 * Sees a doctor
 * Sees a psychiatrist
 * The bowling alley scene: "What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?" "That about sums it up for me"

Self indulgence

 * Reckless driving -- the police chase
 * Over eating, "I don't even have to floss"
 * Seduction of Nancy Taylor -- self-indulgent use of being given another chance. Phil uses information he learned from her one day to later convince her that they went to school together the next
 * Armed car robbery
 * Spaghetti western (American western made in Italy) hero going to the movie
 * Seduction (attempted) of Rita using the same technique he used with Nancy Taylor: bar scene #1, bar scene #2, and bar scene #3

Disillusionment

 * Disillusionment after Rita repeatedly rejects him--montage of slaps. Playing Jeopardy.
 * TV broadcast--disgust. "It's going to be cold; it's going to be gray, and it's going to last you for the rest of your life." Destroying the radio -- twice.
 * Kidnapping of the groundhog, car chase, and fatal crash
 * Suicides
 * Bathtub electrocution
 * Run over by a truck.
 * Jumping from a building

Reformation -- becoming a new man

 * Going to bed with Rita
 * They go to bed, she falls asleep while he reads poetry
 * They go to bed, fall asleep
 * They go to bed, he falls asleep


 * The old beggar
 * Gives him money
 * Dies
 * Feeds him
 * Tries to resuscitate him


 * The job
 * Takes coffee to the crew and cooperates on the shoot
 * Becomes poetic about Punxatawney on film: "When Chekhov saw the long winter, he saw a winter bleak and dark and bereft of hope. Yet we know that winter is just another step in the cycle of life. But standing here among the people of Punxsutawney and basking in the of warmth of their hearths and hearts, I couldn't imagine a better fate than a long and lustrous winter"
 * Takes up piano, becomes a jazz pianist
 * Nice to the hotel guests
 * Takes up ice sculpture


 * Ned Ryerson
 * First gets rid of him by hitting him
 * Then gets rid of him by using gay ploy
 * Eventually buys insurance from him


 * Rescue of boy falling from a tree
 * Helping the old ladies with their flat tire
 * Saves the life of the choking diner
 * Resolves problems of the young engaged couple
 * Has apparently become a chiropractor, treated a dancer's bad back

The ending is comic because it shows us that Phil still has some of the old, calculating, self inside him. As he and Rita walk out of the guest house into the new, snow-covered day, he exclaims, with his new enthusiastic wonder at life: "It's so beautiful -- Lets live here." Then, after he kisses Rita, he adds: "We'll rent to start." (Keep your options open.)

Journal writing and or small group discussions

 * 1) In what ways are we all like Phil at the start of the film? What are we dissatisfied about? Who do we feel superior to? In what ways are we selfish?
 * 2) What can we learn from the film about how to deal with our own problems? (It is only when we stop resenting/hating/complaining about the life we have and accept our situation, that we can truly live.)
 * 3) Did you have any difficulty accepting the fantasy of time repeating itself? Why does the storyteller-filmmaker use this device? What other kind of story does it resemble? (Traditional fairy tales, myths, legends.) Is there anything "real" about this fantasy? (A philosophical truth.) Do films that are more realistic tell a "fairy tale" about life? (They lived happily ever after conventions of many films, etc.)
 * 4) What do you need to do to win the heart of the one you love?

Other activities

 * 1) Play charades to communicate feelings. Classmates respond with a weather word
 * 2) Write and perform a dialog with a comic love scene
 * 3) Write and perform a TV spot featuring Chinese folk weather forecasting