Tim Phares

Today is Groundhog Day. I don’t know what day it is when you’re reading this, but as I write, it’s Groundhog Day. For the record, Punxsutawney Phil did not see his shadow, promising an early spring. Spring is a time of renewal, so an early spring is welcome. It’s an opening to renew your life. Phil Connors does that in the movie Groundhog Day.

TCM is running a marathon of the movie. Like the day in the movie, it’s running over and over. It’s a funny movie and one with philosophical implications. What if there were no consequences for our actions?

On February 1, Pittsburgh weatherman Phil Connors (Bill Murray) assures his viewers that the impending snowstorm will miss the area. He is assigned to cover the annual Groundhog Day festivities in Punxsutawney. He hates the assignment and the local “hicks.”

Phil his new producer, Rita Hanson (Andie McDowell), and his cameraman Larry (Chris Elliot, son of Bob Elliot of Bob and Ray), head for Punxsutawney. Phil wakes up in his room in the inn with Sonny and Cher’s “I Got You Babe” on the radio. He goes out and does a half-hearted report on the groundhog festivities. The blizzard strikes and he and his crew are stuck in Punxsutawney.

When Phil wakes up, it’s Groundhog Day. The same song on the radio, the same banter from the DJ. Phil realizes he’s stuck in a time loop. He confides this to Rita. He winds up talking to a psychologist. Nobody can explain it. He gets drunk. The next morning, he awakes to the same song and the same banter. Phil realizes that since he’s living the same day over and over, there are no consequences for his actions.

He gets drunk, indulges in binge eating, one night stands, and other dangerous activities, and tries to seduce Rita, who rebuffs him. He tries to explain the situation again, predicting events accurately. Rita encourages him to think of the time loop as a blessing, not a curse. Phil decides to use his knowledge gained from the time loop to change himself and do good.

He learns to play the piano. He learns French. He saves people from deadly accidents. He does a report on the Groundhog Day festivities so eloquently that everyone else stops to listen. He also realizes that he is developing real feelings for Rita.

Rita bids for Phil at a charity bachelor auction. He creates an ice sculpture of her and tells her that he’s happy even if he’s stuck in the loop because he loves her. They kiss.

Phil wakes up the next morning to “I Got You Babe” but different banter from the DJ and Rita in bed next to him. He is finally out of the time loop.

What do we learn from Phil’s experience in the time loop? If you’re stuck, love is the way out. We can choose to take an opportunity to do good and spread love, or we can indulge in destructive choices that will keep us stuck in the same thing over and over. It’s a choice, always, and the way out is to choose love.

Groundhog Day is a fun, enjoyable movie, appropriate for the occasion, and teaches us useful lessons. I recommend it. Even if it’s not Groundhog Day.

If you’ve read my articles for a while, you know that one of my favorite things is the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Suzanne loved to go and I loved to go with her. I have continued to attend whenever possible.

Today I saw Fedora, an opera from the 1890s based on an 1882 play. It starred Sonia Yoncheva in the title role, Piotr Beczala as Count Loris Ipanov, Rosa Feola as Countess Olga, and Lucas Meacham as the diplomat DeSeriex. A wonderful cast of very talented performers. It had not been performed at teh Met in a quarter of a century until this run.

There will be encore showings on Wednesday, January 18, at 1:00 PM and 6:30 PM.

Princess Fedora is about to marry Count Vladimir Andrejevich, who is bankrupt from chasing women and gambling. She arrives at Count Vladimir’s place to find him out. Finally, as she sings of her love for him, he is brought in, mortally wounded. It is immediately suspected that Count Vladimir’s neighbor, Count Loris Ipanov, a suspected Nihilist sympathizer, was probably the assassin.

DeSiriex, a French diplomat, and the police inspector, Gretch, plan to investigate. Fedora swears on the (fancy) cross she is wearing that Count Vladimir’s death will be avenged.

Fedora goes to Paris, following Ipanov, to avenge Vladimir’s death. There is a reception at Fedora’s house where her friend, Countess Olga, brings a Polish pianist. Ipanov arrives and declares his love for Fedora. She tells him she is returning to Russia the next day. Ipanov protests that he is unable to go with her as he is exiled from Russia. He confesses to killing Vladimir.

Fedora tells Ipanov to meet her in an hour and she dismisses the party. She writes a letter to the Chief of the Imperial Police in Russia accusing Ipanov of murder.

Ipanov returns and tells her the story of how Vladimir betrayed her with Loris’s wife. He caught them and tried to stop them. Vladimir fired at Ipanov, and Ipanov returned fire, killing Vladimir. Fedora is devastated at Vladimir’s betrayal and convinces Ipanov to spend the night with her. She has fallen in love with him.

At Fedora’s Swiss villa, Ipanov and Fedora are lovers. Olga is also there. She has been betrayed by her Polish piano player. DeSeriex shows up and invites Olga to go riding with him.

DeSeriex tells Fedora that the Imperial Police picked up one of the killer’s accomplices, sent him to a prison by the Neva River, and he drowned slowly in a flood. The accomplice is Ipanov’s brother. On hearing the news, his mother had collapsed and died. Fedora realizes that her letter got them killed.

Ipanov receives a letter informing that his mother and brother have died and the cause was a woman living in Paris who wrote to the Imperial Police. Fedora, in a roundabout way, confesses to writing the letter. Ipanov denounces her and vows revenge, as she begs for his forgiveness.

Fedora takes the poison she has in her cross and dies. As she is dying, she confesses her love for Ipanov and he forgives her. She dies.

What can we learn from Fedora? We learn how destructive jealousy is. It is a poison that can destroy lives. So is betrayal.

Fedora’s letter is written before she has the full story. I’m sure that she would not have written it if she had had the full story. Her impulsiveness and desire for vengeance take two lives.

Finally, we learn about forgiveness and the power of love. Love and forgiveness ultimately emerge victorious in Fedora, despite the ruination of at least three human lives. Forgiveness releases the other person, but much more importantly, it releases us. This winds up being the focal point and end point of Fedora.

A wonderful opera, well sung. And the music was beautiful too. A wonderful example of verismo opera. I recommend it. Catch the encore presentation if you can.

“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” — Henry David Thoreau

Suzanne and I have long been fans of the Metropolitan Opera Live in HD. Today I saw the new opera The Hours, based on the 1998 novel and 2002 movie of the same title. The roles played in the movie by Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Julianne Moore, are here sung by Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, and Kelli O’Hara respectively.

The Hours tells three stories at once, the stories of three women in three different locales and time periods who share a common sense of desperation. Virginia Woolf, sung by DiDonato, is struggling to write her novel Mrs. Dalloway. She is wrestling with her inner Monsters, as her husband calls them, and she cannot seem to find an opening line or decide on her ending. Like Mrs. Dalloway, The Hours takes place over a single day — actually three of them, in the three different places and times, but one single day of each woman’s life.

For those who do not know the novel, Mrs. Dalloway’s first name is Clarissa and she is planning a party. This is one of the connections in The Hours, as Renee Fleming’s character, Clarissa Vaughan, is a lesbian editor in 1990s New York planning a party for her “more than best friend” Richard, an author and poet who is dying of AIDS. Richard is getting an award. (“I’m getting an award because I’m dying,” he says.) Richard sometimes teasingly refers to Clarissa as Mrs. Dalloway.

O’Hara sings the role of Laura Brown, a housewife in 1949 Los Angeles. She lives with her husband and son and she has a baby on the way. She escapes her desperate life by reading. At the time we meet her, she is reading Mrs. Dalloway.

The opera weaves the three women’s stories together in a way the novel and movie can’t. There are scenes where we see Laura Brown in LA reading aloud the very words we see Virginia Woolf in 1920s London struggling to write. The staging blends their voices magnificently.

At various points in the opera, Woolf sings that “someone must die by the end of the day.” (Her novel takes place over the course of one day.) Well, by the end of this opera, someone has, and it leads to a surprising connection at the end.

This is one of many places where you get a sense of foreboding and a sense from the score and the libretto that the women are troubled, almost expecting something to happen. This is a good reminder of the power of our thought. And we also get to feel the love and loss in the lives of the three women.

This is a fascinating work. The score is a bit modernist for my taste, but it contributes to the overall picture of these interesting characters. There is an encore showing this coming Wednesday evening at your local movie theater.

Recently, I was excited to see that my local movie theater was showing Paddington 2. I remembered seeing the original Paddington Bear movie with Suzanne, and I looked forward to the sequel. Imagine my surprise when I remembered that I had seen this one with Suzanne a few years ago also. Oh, well. It was still good.

Paddington looks for work so he can afford an expensive pop-up picture book of London for his Aunt Lucy’s 100th birthday. He happens to be passing the bookstore when the book is being stolen, and he goes in to try and stop the thief. Needless to say, the police arrest Paddington.

His human family, the Browns, try to get him freed. Meanwhile, Paddington teaches the prison chef, Knuckles, how to make marmalade, and the marmalade sandwiches go over brilliantly with the prisoners. Knuckles and two other convicts, Phibs and Spoon, later tell Paddington that although the Browns mean well, they will eventually forget about him. But the Browns faithfully come to visit every day — until one day when they are so dogged in pursuit of evidence to free him that they run past visiting hours.

Knuckles, Phibs and Spoon tell Paddington that they’ll help prove his innocence if he’ll help them escape. He does so, and they forget about him.

The book turns out to be a map to a treasure, and various characters have been showing up at the sites mentioned to get clues.

The Browns have become convinced that the real culprit is their neighbor, egotistical but struggling actor Phoenix Buchanan. To trap Buchanan, they arrange a meeting at Paddington Station (from which Paddington draws his name.) Paddington disguises himself as a trash bin to meet the Browns. He boards a train, but the Browns, missing him, board a different train at the other end of the station. The two trains leave and run parallel for quite a while.

Buchanan finds the treasure in a train car, but Paddington and the Browns (and their nanny) confront him. He overwhelms them, escapes, and severs the train connection with Paddington locked inside. He is photographed by the Browns’ son. Mr. Brown knocks him out. Unfortunately, Paddington’s rail car derails and goes deep in the water. Buchanan is eventually arrested.

Just as it’s sinking, Knuckles, Phibs and Spoon show up and rescue him. He is in a coma, but eventually recovers, on Aunt Lucy’s birthday. While he is pleased to learn that he has been exonerated, he is distraught that he was unable to get the picture book for Aunt Lucy — until the Browns bring him downstairs to discover that they have brought Aunt Lucy herself to London.

Knuckles, Phibs, and Spoon get pardoned and become small businessmen. We last see Buchanan organizing shows in the prison.

The movie is fun, sweet, funny, and an exciting adventure. It is a story of love, determination, and redemption. We can learn about all of these qualities from the story of Paddington 2. Love and determination win the day, justice prevails, and there is redemption for the convicts. Very good things to remember. This sounds like the Divine Universe at play. I recommend this movie.

Tonight I saw Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. TCM and Fathom Events were presenting it for the movie’s fortieth anniversary. The movie was excellent, but it was bittersweet. Suzanne was a major, big-time Trekker. the kind who could tell you the season, episode number, and title of every episode of what has come to be called “The Original Series.” She would tell you that the movie continues the story arc of Season 1, Episode 12, “Space Seed.”

In “Space Seed,” the Enterprise encounters a sleeper ship containing specially bred superhumans, led by a man named Khan Noonien Singh, from Earth’s past who try to take over the Enterprise. Captain James T. Kirk exiles them to the planet Ceti Alpha V.

The movie takes place fifteen years after the events in “Space Seed.” Khan has spent the last fifteen years trying to find a way to escape his exile planet and exact his revenge on Kirk.

The starship Reliant is on a mission to find a lifeless planet to test a scientific device for the Federation called the Genesis Device, which was developed for the Federation by a civilian scientific team led by Dr. Carol Marcus, one of Kirk’s former lovers, and her son David. It is designed to reorganize dead matter into habitable worlds. Two Reliant officers, Captain Clark Terrell and Commander Pavel Chekov (a former Enterprise officer), looking for a lifeless planet to test Genesis, beam down to what they believe is Ceti Alpha VI.

They are captured by Khan and his people and told they are actually on Ceti Alpha V. Ceti Alpha VI has blown up. Khan injects indigenous eel larvae into their ears, controlling their minds. He then takes control of the Reliant. Using Reliant, he attacks the space station Regula I, where Dr. Marcus and her crew have their lab. Regula I sends a distress signal, which is picked up by the Enterprise. The Enterprise is out on a training mission to train new officers, including Spock’s protege, Saavik (played by Kirstie Alley, in her first major motion picture role.)

Admiral Kirk is on board for the training, and due to the emergency, he takes command from Captain Spock. (Yes, everyone got promoted.) Reliant attacks and cripples the Enterprise and Khan demands all material related to Genesis. Kirk buys time and remotely cripples the Reliant‘s shields, making it vulnerable to counterattack. Khan retreats for repairs while the Enterprise limps to Regula I.

Kirk, Dr. McCoy, and Saavik beam aboard Regula I, where they find Dr. Marcus’s crew murdered (except for Dr. Marcus and David.) They also find Terrell and Chekov. Soon they find Dr. Marcus and David hiding Genesis deep inside a planet. Khan orders Terrell and Chekov to kill Kirk. Instead, Terrell kills himself and the eel comes out of Chekov’s ear. He is taken back to the Enterprise.

Khan is transporting Genesis on the Reliant, intending to maroon Kirk on the lifeless planetoid, but Kirk and Spock trick him into a rendezvous inside the Mutara Nebula. In the nebula, shields are disabled. The two wounded ships can have a fair fight. Kirk and his crew disable Reliant, mortally wounding Khan. As he dies, Khan activates Genesis.

The Enterprise crew detects the activation and tries to escape, but is unable to do so without the disabled warp drive. Spock goes to repair the warp drive, but the engine room is flooded with radiation. McCoy tries to stop him from entering, but he uses a Vulcan mind trick on McCoy and repairs the warp drive, allowing the Enterprise to escape the explosion, which forms a new planet. In so doing, Spock dies. (Spoiler alert: He’s back in the next four movies.)

We also learn that David is Kirk’s son.

What can we learn from this tale? Khan’s fierce drive for revenge drives him to his death; Spock dies saving his friends. Genesis breeds new life. We can see in Khan’s story arc the price that revenge and anger cost. They can literally kill you. We see nobility of helping people, even when it costs you, perhaps even your life. We see the devotion of one’s life to service. And we see that there is always a new life if we but know how to create it.

This is a wonderful, dramatic, swashbuckling adventure with several underlying metaphysical messages. I highly recommend it.