"What would you do if you were stuck in one place, and every day was exactly the same, and nothing that you did mattered?" [...]

In 2021 I was wrestling with the same question. Living in lockdown, I was feeling frustration, ennui, and like forward progress had ground to a halt. The circumstances created an opportunity to subject myself to a very unusual challenge: to watch the same film once a day, every day, for a year. [...]

I began to notice the reoccurrence of certain extras from scene to scene, building my own narrative around their identities. I realised the boy in a wheelchair in the background of the hospital scene is the same boy Phil will eventually save from breaking his leg every day. [...]

By the midway point, my viewing had shifted into a mode of cataloguing and memorisation. Phil Connors's weather reports ran through my head unbidden, and I had built myself a mental map of Punxsutawney to where I felt like I could give directions to a visitor. I began to talk to the film as it played.

Some days, the viewing felt like a curse. When Rita discovers Phil's dilemma, she says: "Maybe it's not a curse. Maybe it depends on how you look at it."

Previously, previously, previously, previously, previously.