Forever in a Day
Sisyphus, Camus ... and Bill Murray
The “time-loop” genre is exemplified by the classic movie Groundhog Day, where Bill Murray is forced to re-live the same day repeatedly. It is a modern fable with roots in mythology.
In Greek legend, the gods condemned poor Sisyphus to push a boulder up a mountain — only for it to roll back down so that he must start again, repeating the cycle forever. His days are repetitive and meaningless.
In his book The Myth of Sisyphus, Albert Camus explores this dilemma of how to live, given the indifference of the universe. Camus argues that in an “absurd” world one must defy the gods and live passionately despite the cruelties of fate.
Camus opens with the stark line:
“There is but one truly serious philosophical problem, and that is suicide.”
Camus was writing about Sisyphus in 1940 as Paris had fallen under Nazi occupation. These were tough days — Hitler’s armies seemed unbeatable, and Camus was afflicted with bouts of tuberculosis (coughing up blood) – hence the bleak tone of the book.
The film’s screenwriter, Danny Rubin, refers to Groundhog Day as an “existential comedy,” and it makes a stronger case than Nobel Prize winner Camus. Funnyman Bill Murray's performance offers a compelling exploration of human meaning in an absurd universe.
We are introduced to Murray’s character, Phil, a loathsome narcissist. He even taunts and mocks a homeless old man begging on the street. (Murray is ideal in the role, playing a despicable asshole with a hint of charm.)
Once Phil realizes he is stuck in a time-loop, he initially responds to his predicament with clownish hedonism, indulging in criminal debauchery, knowing he’ll never suffer any consequences. But after performing these selfish stunts thousands of times, Phil is troubled by the emptiness of the experience, and he sinks into depression.
Phil rants to a crowd: “I’ll give you a winter prediction. It’s gonna be cold. It’s gonna be gray. And it’s gonna last you for the rest of your life.”
Camus uses abstract reasoning to argue against suicide. In the film, Phil actually does commit suicide, many times. Yet suicide does not solve Phil's dilemma; his loop day reboots every morning.
(Murray’s hangdog expression convinces me more powerfully than Camus’s logic.) Phil is still miserable, with no end in sight.
One night Phil sits with a couple of drunks in a bar, and moans: “What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing you did mattered?” (His companion’s dry response: “That about sums it up for me.”)
However, over thousands of karmic reincarnations, Phil’s character slowly evolves. Having begun as an arrogant bastard, Phil’s misery has finally prompted some empathy for the suffering of his fellow human beings. Perhaps out of boredom initially, he starts performing good deeds around the town.
With rehearsed foreknowledge, Phil prevents many harmful accidents, saves a choking restaurant guest, etc.
Pleased with himself, Phil modestly tells his coworker Rita that he may be a minor god.
Phil learns that the beggar he’d previously mocked dies alone at night in an alley. Phil begins a daily quest to save the old man, who he calls Pop. Each day, Phil buys Pop a meal and gets him medical care, etc. But no matter what Phil tries, each night the old man dies.
Phil has encountered a no-win situation: he cannot save Pop. Phil has good intentions, but is not a god after all. His ego deflated, Phil is learning humility. Again, it seems that nothing Phil does matters.
There is a relevant quote from Aeschylus:
Pain that cannot forget
falls drop by drop upon the heart,
and in our despair,
against our will,
comes wisdom
by the awful grace of the gods.”
In TV’s Buffyverse saga, the character Angel, like Sisyphus, is condemned to eternal atonement. But in the episode titled Epiphany he has flipped the switch:
“If there's no great glorious end to all this, if nothing we do matters... then all that matters is what we do. 'Cause that's all there is. What we do. Now. Today.”
Angel is advocating humility and engagement, rather than surrendering to futility.
Over the past few decades, I’ve been the primary caretaker for a series of cats (Rizzy, Zoey, TomTom, Sebastian, Delilah, Holly, Scout, and Simon.) Today only Simon is still with me.
Each time I decide whether to adopt a cat, I have to consider: these are beings that I will care for and love, knowing that someday they will die, and I’ll have to mourn their loss. Yet I make the same choices again, just as Phil has to do with Pop. “If nothing we do matters, then all that matters is what we do.”
By the end of the movie, Phil has experienced his own epiphany. He is humbled, knowing he cannot control the universe – but he can choose to engage with it passionately, through good and bad.
He embraces life's bittersweet cycle, creates joy amidst the inevitable sorrow, and learns to play piano for new friends.
Likewise, Camus never succumbed to despair in 1940. He volunteered at the underground newspaper Combat for the Resistance, despite the danger of arrest by the Gestapo.
After the liberation of France, he renewed his life — becoming the father of twins. Years later, looking back at his wartime Sisyphus book, Camus said he’d written it as a way to “find the means to proceed beyond nihilism,” and as proof that one could choose to “live and create, in the very midst of the desert.”
Compassionately engaging with life’s full catastrophe enables Phil & Camus to be creative beings, within an ever-silent, mysterious cosmos.
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NOTES:
In the first draft of this essay, I referenced a few other time-loop tales, such as “Source Code,” but had to edit.
In the best of these stories, the many repetitions force psychological growth in the protagonist. Here’s one section that got cut:
Another Hollywood variation of the time-loop scenario is the futuristic war movie “Edge of Tomorrow.” Tom Cruise & Emily Blunt’s characters find themselves mired in a grim loop: they are soldiers fighting an unwinnable battle, where they each die again and again.
They are trapped in a “forever” war. (One thinks of the weariness of Ukrainian soldiers today, locked into a grinding war against Putin’s invasion force.)
After thousands of repetitions, Tom Cruise gradually evolves from a selfish coward to a lucid hero.