The terrific and terrifying experimentation of existentialism

« What if there were no tomorrow? » asks the main character when he realizes that he is condemned to live the same life again and again. This is maybe the best way to summarize this movie, Groundhog Day, which, while being a very naive and easy-to-watch movie at first glance, might also reveal something about the quest of identity. 

Indeed, for those of you who may not have seen the film, the scenario is basically the story of an egocentric weather forecaster who covers a popular and boring event in a small town, the Groundhog Day event. Everything is fine, until he wakes up and understands that he is living the same day as the day before. He then starts experiencing the same day again and again, which makes him change his behavior in order to get out of this evil cycle.

Who has never dreamt of living a day once again? Because you made a mistake, because you said something that you shouldn’t have,… Everyone has already dreamt of erasing its mistakes. You may also dream of trying another path for your life, to see where it leads and to know whether it can make your life better.

There are plenty of reasons to want to live his day again and again, in order to somehow achieve the perfect day.

Exhilarating though it sounds, this experience of starting the same day again and again is terrifying. At first, it seems great and enables you to do the most of your life, as you don’t have to worry about the consequences nor about the social rules of moral.

“We could do whatever we want. I’m not gonna live by their rules anymore!” claims the main character.

After experiencing a sense of freedom, the character starts living an aesthetic life.  He tries a lot of excesses : crime, food, attempts of suicide… He does not care about the moral issues. In a way, he is trying to find his way in a world where he does not have to care about others.

He is trying to become the “Ubermensch” Nietzsche describes in Thus Spoke Zarathustra. Namely, a man fully empowered and who creates his own norms.

He is trying to find his true self, and his own norms by relating to objects: Kant would say he is living an esthetic life, which is closer to the life of an animal than to the life of a responsible human being, as it is based on pleasures and not on a true self-consciousness. And indeed, this life does not make him happy. He experiences despair as he understands he keeps living the same life again and again. While trying to live the best life possible, he realizes he cannot be satisfied until he has achieved a real goal. This film is the story of the quest of that goal.

This story is the story of all of us, condemned to live the same day over and over again, because of this kind of routine going on as soon as we have obligations: work, studies, friends,... Life keeps repeating itself, and we cannot stop it until we found a true purpose to our life. This is why the quest of the true self through the experimentation of hedonism, crime, is interesting to watch. At last, the character surrenders and finds out that this is not the kind of self he wants, neither can, be. He cannot handle having no responsibility and not seeing any progress in his life.

This film can be understood as an invitation to reevaluate moral values and try to be the self we want to be by experimenting new things while being aware of the consequences. 

That may be the most frustrating thing about the esthetical life depicted by Nietzsche, namely the fact that you may have to reinvent yourself everyday. However, by doing so, you eradicate your previous self and therefore lose all the advantages you had acquired thanks to your hard work and your experience. By  finding your purpose in life, it suddenly makes sense as long as you don't hold to this goal for too long. 

So, should we reinvent our life every day, without caring about the consequences? Or should we follow the path towards a goal we truly want to achieve?
The answer lies in the middle. Both are necessary to fulfill our dreams and ambitions.

Don't stay locked down in the prison of an average everyday life and find a purpose in your life: these are the lessons I'll retain from the exhilarating existentialism experience depicted in Groundhog Day.