Re: Groundhog Day
I thought GD was profound - the message is, you can't make deals with Fate or God, you can't buy your way out of self-indulgence by service and exterior atonement - something the modern world should learn. You atone only by being a mensch, simply that and nothing else. Your only real duty is to be right with God - the rest follows almost automatically.
I compare it to "A Christmas Carol". Dickens seems to think that fear and loathing of damnation is the origin of morality. The moral climate of CC is repugnant in the extreme. (I admit to detesting Dickens.)
(A similar inversion can be found in the films "Forest Gump" and "Pulp Fiction" - the first is morally bankrupt in its false innocence, while the second reveals a spiritual message beneath its grimy exterior.)
-drl