Palm Springs

Released on Hulu in July 2020

Directed by: Max Barbakow

Screenplay by: Andy Siara

Starring: Andy Samberg, Cristin Milioti, J.K. Simmons

I’m not really a huge movie watcher or even a cinephile. Every year, I’ll check out the upcoming releases and kind of naturally decide which movies I’ll vibe or connect with or not. Some movies look like a better experience with friends at the cinema, others look more appealing for watching in bed, snuggled in your blankets. However, even though I’ll appreciate and enjoy a lot of movies, there are few with which I really connect to. To the story, to the characters, to the music etc.

Well, Palm Springs was probably my favorite movie of the year. If you haven’t watched it yet, don’t read any further and don’t look up the synopsis or a trailer! I really think this is the type of movie best appreciated when you have little to no knowledge of it before. If you’re feeling reluctant, let me describe it in a few words: it’s a comedy starring Andy Samberg and Cristin Milioti with a supernatural twist that makes it worthwhile. The characters are incredibly charming. That’s pretty much how I described it whenever I showed it to friends. And each time they loved it. Anyways, yeah, just go watch it, it’s only 1h30 long and in my opinion it’s a perfect watch in today’s quarantine reality (I’ll touch on that later).

It’s no secret that it takes from a classic formula: the Groundhog Day trope. However, I think it adapts it perfectly for modern audiences, making it more relatable as well. And instead of having one character going through the loop alone, they decided to bring in two characters, including one who has already lived through the loop for a very long time.

Nyles: I guess you followed me. It's one of those infinite time loop situations you might have heard about.

Sarah: That I might have heard about?

Nyles: Yeaaah…

SYNOPSIS

Stuck in a time loop, two wedding guests develop a budding romance while living the same day over and over again.

CHARACTERS

So, for me, one of the movie’s strongest points is its characters. I think that even from the start of the movie, it’s incredibly easy to relate to them.

Nyles: First of all, what I think was a great decision from the filmmakers was to make Nyles used to the time-loop. Not only was this extremely efficient in terms of storytelling since he can show Sarah the ropes and rules of the time loop, but it also added a degree of mystery to his character. We don’t know what he used to do before the wedding, we don’t know how much he’s changed from the initial wedding after restarting his day over and over and over.

Now, I don’t think the whole point of this was to make his past mysterious but rather to project a blank slate over him. Maybe it’s just me, but I felt like he was a perfectly relatable character: he’s funny with a good sense of humor, but clearly in a bad place mentally. Life has no meaning for him (at least before meeting Sarah) and he’s doomed to repeat the same day over and over, waking up in the same bed everyday (kinda sounds like quarantine huh?). I think even the most optimistic people can relate to this, we’ve all had a bad day, and looked into the future with despair and hopelessness (sounds a bit intense but you get the gist).

Nyles doesn’t feel anything anymore, he’s numb and alone in his loop world. Obviously though that all changes once he brings Sarah with him by accident. Life becomes less mundane and he grows attached to her. However he’s not a perfect person or a victim, he’s also done some bad shit like not telling Sarah that they had already hooked up. His character arc is pretty classic as he learns the value of connecting with another person but it really can resonate with anyone. Hence Nyles being a blank slate, a relatable persona for a lot of people.

Is this a good time to point out that Nyles sounds like nihilist? Ya know, character that believes that life has no meaning is called Nyles.

Nyles : We kind of have no choice but to live. So I think your best bet is just to learn how to suffer existence.

Sarah: Sarah has fucked up. Whether that be the night before the wedding (sleeping with your sister’s fiance, not cool) but also way before that. She’s had a failed marriage and overall has a shitty view of love. She gave it a shot and it didn’t work. So now she’s seen as the family disappointment, especially compared to her sister who seemingly is an amazing person. That’s the person she is before getting stuck in the loop.

Throughout the movie we see her escaping the shitty situations she’s in and having fun, enjoying life, not caring about a thing. What I appreciated is that in the movie this is not the way out. You can’t move forward without addressing your mistakes or your demons. Throughout the movie we see her waking every morning in what we assume is her bed. I don’t know if anyone caught the detail but we always hear a shower running when she wakes up, indicating she’s not alone. The morning after she takes mushrooms with Nyles in the desert she stays longer in bed until a familiar figure steps out of the shower: her sister’s fiance.

Obviously, that’s messed up, but it adds a whole layer to Sarah’s character. How could she believe in love after what happened? How can she love herself after what happened? And also, how could anyone love her after what happened. Yep, that’s pretty dire.

At one point, however, she realizes that she can’t erase her mistake but she can move forward, she needs to move her ass. Cue a montage of her learning astrophysics in order to leave the time loop.

Sarah and Nyles grow together in the loop. They grow attached and find the joy for life and love they thought they had lost.

Roy: I guess I should also mention J.K. Simmons’ character, (by the way it was a lovely surprise to see him in this movie) he’s also a sad husk of a man when before being stuck in the loop. He’s unhappy as shit in his marriage and pretty much tells Nyles that he’s in a pit of despair. Yup, not fun.

However, by the end of the movie, he’s learned to appreciate his family. Sure he went through a phase of psychotic anger where he occasionally tortured and killed Nyles in gruesome ways, but he’s grown past that. He’s retreated to Irvine, his family home where he’d rather spend every loop day with his loving family.

Towards the end of the movie he tells Nyles:

Roy: You gotta find your Irvine.

Nyles: I don't have an Irvine.

Roy: We all have an Irvine.

And aren’t we all looking for an Irvine?

The old grandma: Hmm I guess she might also be in the loop. I’ll settle for that Easter egg.

The loop: Yep, I’ll consider the time loop as a character. I hope that’s fine with you. I think it’s always nice to find deeper meaning in movies, and here I thought the time loop could easily be a metaphor or at least symbolic of the loops that we can find ourselves in at some points of our life. It’s a loop where every day feels the same and existence can be mundane as a whole. You can fall into that loop after something personal happening to you, like a breakup for example. The tragedy is that while the characters are stuck in this loop or rut, they can’t fathom a way out of it. Similarly to how a lot of people can feel powerless over their situations in real life.

MUSIC

By God this soundtrack was amazing. Part of it reminded me of Nacho Libre (an underrated classic by the way). If I closed my eyes I could actually feel as if I were in the desert under the warm haze of the sun. I highly recommend giving it a listen. I thought it accompanied the movie brilliantly along with its different themes and moods.

A few songs you might want to listen to from the movie:

Forever And Ever - Demis Roussos: what a song this is! I thought it acted beautifully as the overall theme of the movie and had a dreamlike quality that resonated with the atmosphere.

The Brazilian - Genesis: this acted as a more energetic, almost electric theme for the movie. It’s an intense song that worked perfectly for the more intense scenes.

When The Morning Comes - Darryl Hall & John Oates: “I’ll be alright when the morning comes”, This lyric closes off the movie and I think we should all strive to feel hopeful just like the song is.

Nyles & Sarah Theme - Cornbread Compton (the movie’s composer!): another dreamy soundscape. It truly does make my mind wander.

PACING

This might be worth mentioning, but I thought the pace of the movie was brilliant. Not too long, not too short, and no filler. We had enough scenes to get attached to the characters, to understand their perspectives and personalities. The movie is edited amazingly which keeps it dynamic overall. There was a really nice energy that kept the movie afloat and moving forward.

VIBE

Yeah, I’m not really a movie critic so I don’t know if this category should exist but… the vibe of the movie !! Not only was the location beautiful, but everything is. From the colors (Nyles’ flower shirt is a banger) to the music to the locations to the message and to… dinosaurs? Yep, everything’s there.

By the way, I loved the dinosaur scene. Nyles and Sarah are both tripping on shrooms while camping in the desert at night and they’re shocked to see dinosaurs far out on the horizon. A little eye squinting made me see that the dinosaurs were actually rock formations (or were they?).

Overall there was this dreamlike quality that made me fall in love with the movie.

THE MESSAGE

To be honest, it’s a simple message: hope.

All characters start in their own shitty situations in life.

• Sarah has done something horrible to her sister and does not believe in love.

• Nyles does not believe in love and thinks we’re all holding on to this idea of love because we’re too scared to be alone.

• Roy has hit a slump in his marriage and does not feel happy in his life.

However, they all figure out through their own ways that life is worth living and that they can find happiness and a reason to live the next day. I don’t think that reason needs to be love necessarily, but it will have been the driving force of these characters.

I think Nyles’ phrase: “Even though I pretend not to be, I've realized that I'm completely co-dependent, but I'm cool with it because I think that life should be shared now and I need you to survive” perfectly encapsulates it all. Maybe it’s just something personal, but that sentence truly resonated with me. And I even think it’s applicable to friends and family. Life should be shared and we should cherish the moments we get to spend together, they are truly moments that matter.

So I know it’s hard for everyone currently in quarantine in these tough, Covid times, but it’ll be alright. At least we have each other.

Anyways, that was it! I think this was my favorite movie of the year. I couldn’t watch any dramas or movies of that type this year because I truly felt that with everything shitty going on, I needed a nice feel-good movie with a message I resonated with. And boy did I find a gem!

Maybe we’d all like a day that never ends (provided we have a way to get out) so that we could do all the things we love without time passing, learn all the things we want. But why not start that now?

TLDR: watch Palm Springs, it’s great!