Freedom Under Circumstances in Groundhog Day

Sartre's concept of "bad faith" means consciously ignoring our freedom in order to avoid accepting responsibility for our actions and choices. As humans, we have free will under any circumstances, although bad faith leads us to believe we do not. In the film, Groundhog Day, Phil (Bill Murray) is a grumpy, inconsiderate, and unhappy weatherman bored with his annual assignment to cover Groundhog Day in a small town. It is his bad faith that causes him to think he has no other choice but to continue living life this way.  Bad weather causes Phil and his camera crew to have to stay in the town overnight, but when Phil awakens the next morning he discovers that it is again Groundhog Day and that he must re-live the day. This cycle repeats to an insurmountable number of days in which he must repeat this day over and over, despite his failed attempts to escape it. This can appear that Phil has lost his freedom, but I believe it is the opposite. Being forced to re-live the same day allows Phil the freedom to perfect that day, to learn skills- both practical and emotional, inevitably causing him to break his bad faith. He is even free from death, allowing him to fear nothing and allowing him the freedom to do absolutely anything he wants, good or bad, with the knowledge that he won't have to take responsibility for his actions that day. Sartre claims that life is a project, we must make it into what we ourselves want it to be. For Phil, this single day became his life and his project. He experimented, learned, and grew into the person that he wanted to be- a happier, compassionate, and loving person, able to accept his circumstances but remain aware of his freedom to change them.