The film critic Manny Farber wrote in 1962 about the divide between what he called "white elephant" art — lumbering, prone to grandiosity — and its "termite" counterpart, dedicated to smaller tasks "in a kind of squandering-beaverish endeavor that isn't anywhere or for anything." His examples of the latter included Laurel & Hardy comedies and Howard Hawks' "The Big Sleep." The fun stuff.
"Squandering-beaverish" — what a great headlong adjectival phrase, ramming together industry and waste.
Harold Ramis, the actor and filmmaker who died Monday at age 69, was one of postwar America's great termite artists, a sly moralist beaverishly working in the discredited genres of frat-house comedy (he was one of the screenwriters of "National Lampoon's Animal House") and Cold War service farce ("Stripes," which he co-wrote and co-starred in) and more.
His masterpiece was 1993's "Groundhog Day," starring Ramis' longtime collaborator Bill Murray as Phil Connors, an egotistical, cranky Pittsburgh weatherman dispatched to cover the titular holiday in Punxsutawney, Pa. Marooned by a surprise snowstorm, he falls asleep and wakes to find himself caught in a temporal loop. He's stuck in Feb. 2.
I probably just wasted a paragraph. Two decades after its release, it's hard to imagine there are many Americans who aren't acquainted with the plot of "Groundhog Day." There are more citizens who can describe its storyline than there are people who know what's prohibited by the Third Amendment to the Bill of Rights. (The quartering of military troops in private homes — and yes, I had to look it up.)
The title has entered the political lexicon as a patriotic alternative to the excessively French "deja vu." In January, the Democratic House Majority PAC zapped out a parody "Groundhog Day" poster with GOP Speaker John Boehner and Majority Leader Eric Cantor standing in for Murray and Andie MacDowell, who plays Rita, the film's love interest. The text: "If you liked the GOP's obsession with Obamacare repeal votes in 2013, you're gonna love 2014!"
Just weeks later, the conservative group ForAmerica released a video using footage from the film to argue that, as the group's Brent Bozell put it, Barack Obama's presidency "is just like the movie 'Groundhog Day.' Obama feeds us lies over and over again and either thinks we won't notice or expects us to forget."
That's not exactly just like "Groundhog Day" — which Obama has cited as one of his favorite films — but let's not nitpick.
You don't have to be a politician to love the movie, which Ramis co-wrote from Danny Rubin's original script. Despite endless cable viewings it remains fresh, perhaps even "timeless," to use a word often deployed in support of films that are old and boring. And while Murray and a deep bench of supporting actors are sublime, its power resides in how Ramis' finely calibrated comedy illuminates what can only be called a blueprint for living.
When Phil's day begins repeating, his first response is to spiral further into himself, ending in a black-comic montage in which he commits suicide over and over again, to no avail. He rebounds, slowly, by digging into the town, and ultimately organizing the day for the benefit of everyone around him. Sort of like the Myth of Sisyphus, with dinner dance to follow.
You could say that Phil's travail is teaching him to be nice to people, which is true but misses the larger point. Kindness, after all, is just one among many existential best practices.
Midway through our hero's very long day — a blogger calculated his loop as 10 years of Groundhog Days, but Ramis said that seemed too short — Rita sizes up his sad state and recites a few lines from Sir Walter Scott:
The wretch, concentred all in self,
Living, shall forfeit fair renown,
And, doubly dying, shall go down
To the vile dust, from whence he sprung,
Unwept, unhonoured, and unsung.
The message of "Groundhog Day" is that we are not at war with death — lost cause, don't waste your time — but with the despair of life "concentred all in self."
This termite is digging an escape tunnel.
cseiler@timesunion.com • 518-454-5619