Palm Springs: A Metaphor for Relationships
Relationships are complicated. Whether they are romantic or simply platonic, navigating a relationship and thriving in one is probably one of the most complicated feats a human being can master. And even so, we never actually master it. Relationships are something we strive for and do our best to hold on to; relationships with others are what keep us from being alone forever. This concept is the core theme of the 2020 film Palm Springs. Set at a wedding venue in Palm Springs, California, the film is loosely about a wedding guest and the maid of honor that become stuck in a time loop in which they relive the day of the wedding over and over again. While stuck in the loop, the couple learns a lot but, most importantly, they learn about the complexity of relationships. Before I dive deeper into this analysis, let me first explain the plot of the film. Spoilers are inevitable so if you have not seen this film yet, I highly recommend giving it a watch.
Palm Springs tells the story of Nyles (Andy Samberg), a man who is attending the wedding of his girlfriend’s best friend and becomes stuck in a time loop in which he keeps reliving the day of the wedding. The film begins at the start of the day, in which he has a depressing sexual encounter with his girlfriend, drinks most of the day and attends the wedding wearing bright yellow swim trunks and a floral Hawaiian shirt. At the reception, Nyles seems pretty out of it until the bride’s sister and maid of honor Sarah (Cristin Milioti) gets up to make a speech. Sarah has also been drinking heavily and is taken aback when she is called upon to make her Maid of Honor speech, something she legitimately did not know she was responsible for. As Sarah fumbles through her speech, Nyles comes to her rescue and delivers a heart-felt speech about loneliness and how the bride and groom, Tala and Abe, are no longer alone because they have found each other. As the reception continues, Sarah and Nyles talk and she asks him if he believed anything he said and he responds with “Not a word of it. We’re all fucking alone”. As the night continues, Nyles asks Sarah to hang out with him and she asks if his girlfriend would mind and he says she wouldn’t. We then see Nyles showing Sarah how Mysti, Nyles’ girlfriend, is cheating on him with the wedding officiant.
After having a laugh about this, Nyles takes Sarah to a secluded area away from the venue where they begin to make out. Suddenly, as if out of nowhere, Nyles is struck by an arrow launched by a mad man dressed in black and wearing black face paint. Sarah freaks out and Nyles runs away to a nearby cave to avoid the mad man pursuing him. Sarah follows Nyles and, after seeing him crawling into a glowing orange orb, becomes rightfully confused. Nyles attempts to scream at her not to follow him as he is sucked into the glowing orb but Sarah is subsequently sucked in. The film then cuts to the beginning of the day with Nyles having, yet again, a disappointing sexual encounter with his girlfriend and getting drunk in the hotel pool. As he is having a conversation with a wedding guest, one he has had many times before, something new happens. Sarah emerges and begins throwing full cans of beer at him. Nyles falls off of the pool floatie he is on and Sarah jumps in after him screaming “What did you do to me”. Side note, I absolutely love this scene. It is pure comedic gold and Milioti sells the funny here basically trying to kill Samberg’s character. We then see Sarah waking up thinking it is the day after the wedding, but sees that everything is the same and people do not understand why she is asking what day it is. After screaming at Nyles they talk and he explains to her that she is reliving her sister Tala’s wedding day and that yesterday, tomorrow and the day after will always be November 9th, the day of Tala and Abe’s wedding.
At first, Sarah doesn’t want to believe it. She even gets in her car and drives all the way back to her home in Austin, Texas. When she arrives home, she falls asleep and wakes up the morning of Tala and Abe’s wedding, again. Sarah then comes back to Nyles and asks him what is going on. Nyles expands on what he was trying to explain to her earlier. They will continue to relive this day over and over again. He says that if they die or fall asleep the day will simply reset; no one else will know that they’ve been reliving the same day and there is no way for them to escape. Nyles said he’s tried everything and nothing has worked. He has chosen to accept this and actually feels like it’s pretty awesome. Sarah, still a bit confused, asks what was up with the man dressed in black trying to kill him the other night. Nyles then explains that the man’s name is Roy, the groom’s father’s cousin, who attends the wedding and always gets drunk at the bar. Nyles explains one night he partied hard with Roy, drinking and sharing some cocaine he stole from the officiant. Drunk and high, Roy admits he doesn’t really like his life. He says marriage is a bottomless pit of nothingness and he wishes he could stay in that day forever. Nyles, not thinking straight, leads Roy to the cave with the glowing orange orb. Roy is entranced and enters it. Nyles, quickly regaining clarity, tries to call him back but it’s too late. When Roy realized what had happened, he decided to take his anger out on Nyles. He occasionally comes by to murder Nyles. Since Roy originally came to the wedding from his house in Irvine, when his day resets he wakes up at home. Nyles says he thinks Roy has accepted his situation in his own way.
From here, Sarah decides she will try what she can to stop the loop. Nyles agrees to help but doesn’t believe it will work. At first, she thinks stopping the loop will include telling her sister Tala a secret truth, she whispers it into her ear when she gives her maid of honor speech at the wedding. We don’t find out what this secret is quite yet but we’ll get there. When this doesn’t work, Sarah decides to try it Nyles’ way. They end up spending each day together clowning around, freaking people out with their knowledge of the day and they even actively crash the wedding in a very funny scene where they hide a bomb in the wedding cake at the reception and dress like a hero and a villian to disarm it. Feeling more comfortable with her, Nyles takes Sarah to some of the places he likes to go to avoid the wedding. He first takes her to a local bar a few miles away from the venue, a shooting range in the backyard of some random guy’s house and an empty vacation home where the owners are out of town. Sarah ends up really enjoying the time she spends with Nyles. Each day she wakes up in her room at the resort, where there is always someone showering in her bathroom, and immediately goes to see Nyles. There is even a sweet scene where she wakes up before him and goes to the local bar he showed her and throws him a party with a banner that reads “Happy Millinoith Birthday Dipshit”.
This is where I believe both begin falling in love with one another because, that night, they camp out in the desert, have sex for the first time and then see a pack of Brontosauruses roaming in the horizon. I’ll get back to what I think this scene means later. The next morning, Sarah wakes up excited but she decides to confront the person showering in her bathroom first. We find out that this is Abe and they slept together the night before the wedding. Abe says it was a mistake and it will never happen again and Sarah begins to really feel the gravity of her situation. Later, Sarah and Nyles take off in the car and she begins to act erratically. Nyles asks her what’s wrong and she says if they keep reliving the same day and nothing really matters, something Nyles says to her in the desert, then why don’t they do whatever they want? A police officer begins to follow them and, thinking it’s Roy messing with them, Sarah leads him on a chase. Sarah drinks while driving and Nyles tries to talk her down. Sarah reiterates that, if nothing matters, why limit themselves. Nyles replies that “The people may not remember what they do to them but they do. Dying may not be an option for them but the pain is real”. Sarah stops the car and seems to turn herself into the police officer. She then steals the police officer’s gun and threatens him with it. Nyles tries to stop her but is tased by the cop. The two are detained on the side of the road and Sarah tells Nyles she’s done with the loop. She wants tomorrow to be tomorrow and she wants out. She then gets up and throws herself in front of an oncoming semi truck.
When the day resets, Nyles tries to look for Sarah but cannot find her. He suspects that she found her way out of the loop and is filled with despair. He drinks more heavily than he did before and is very depressed until, finally, Sarah comes back. She tells him that she found a way to break the loop and we see in a flashback montage that, after she threw herself in front of the truck, she was getting up early and traveling to a nearby cafe to study quantum theory. Sarah used each day to learn, study and survey the glowing orb in the cave. When she finally figures it out, she goes back to Nyles and informs him that, in order to break the loop they must blow themselves up in the glowing orb at just the right time. Nyles is very happy to see Sarah again but says it probably won’t work. Sarah pleads with him and says she knows it will work but Nyles says he’s not ready to get out of the loop. Since Sarah is ready, she goes forward with her plan.
As this would be the last time she lives through Tala and Abe’s wedding, she acts as the perfect maid of honor and gives a very heartfelt speech at the reception and basically gives a little nod to Abe telling him he better be good to her sister and he better not fuck up. After this, Sarah makes a call and then heads to the cave. Nyles spends the day traveling to Roy’s home in Irvine and asks him to just kill him. At first, Roy is annoyed but then they have a little chat. Roy admits that it wasn’t Nyles’ fault that he got stuck in the loop. He knew, sort of, what he was getting himself into and, after living the same day, waking up to a wife and kids that will never age, he realizes just how precious his life is. Nyles asks him about “Marriage being a bottomless pit” and Roy responds by simply saying “Things change”. Realizing he needs to change as well, Nyles asks Roy to kill him one last time so his day can restart and he can get to Sarah in time.
Upon using his loop knowledge and connections to hitch a quick ride to the desert, Nyles finds Sarah and tells her he’s ready to go with her. Strapped in C4, Sarah and Nyles embrace and kiss as they are pulled into the glowing orb just as Sarah pushes the detonator button. The screen turns to white and we see Sarah and Nyles floating in a pool in the vacated house he took her to earlier in the film. They talk for a bit and a family walks in on them asking what they’re doing in their pool. Nyles comments that he guesses they come back on November 10th and they laugh. The main film ends here but there is a post credits scene where Roy walks up to Nyles at the wedding telling him he got Sarah’s message and asks if he really thinks it’ll work. Nyles, wearing a suit and drinking a glass of champagne, responds saying he doesn’t know what he’s talking about and asks if they know each other. Roy apologies and says he must be mistaken. Nyles walks away and Roy turns with a little smirk on his face.
It is very fitting that this film took the old troupe of two people stuck in a time loop in order to learn a lesson and turned it on it’s head like this. Yes, both Nyles and Sarah have to change in their own ways but they also need to learn to let other people into their lives and actually work at a relationship. Nyles’ must overcome his obvious immaturity and lack of faith in the sacrifices we must make to make a relationship grow and Sarah must learn to open up to people and abandon her selfish ways. At the start of the film, both are stuck in their own personal loops. Nyles’, although already caught in the loop, is stuck in a vicious cycle of how closed off he is in his relationship with his girlfriend Mysti. There is one small but very telling scene at the beginning of the film where Mysti tells Nyles, “Don’t bring our drama here today”. I believe this piece of dialogue hints at what got him stuck in the loop in the first place. But, upon meeting Sarah, he is confronted with having to grow up and accept change in his life. Initially, Nyles is scared but he eventually gives in and follows Sarah’s lead. Him saying he’s not ready to leave the loop and how comfortable he was in the loop before Sarah came along confirms this but it is only when he learns and grows with her that he realizes he is actually ready to leave or “grow up”.
Sarah on the other hand is a little more complicated. At first, she wants to leave the loop entirely, but then, with a little help from Nyles, tries to go with the flow. What ultimately sparks Sarah’s drive to figure out how to leave is when she wakes up and confronts Abe showering in her hotel room bathroom. The secret she whispers into Tala’s ear is that she slept with Abe and her confronting Abe in this scene solidifies her realization that a real change must happen. Sarah realizes that the universe won’t fix her problem if she confesses; oh no, it’s much more than that. Sarah must abandon her selfish ways, open up and be active in her own life. Throughout the film, both Sarah and Nyles kind of walk their own path, even when they’re together. But, when they start understanding each other they truly change and their environment begins to change around them. One glaring example of this would be in the desert when Nyles and Sarah have sex for the first time. They are sitting outside of their tent and look onto the horizon to see a pack of Brontosauruses walking past the mountains. I believe this scene is very important to this film because of what it represents. Seeing the Brontosauruses roam in the horizon of the Palm Springs desert represents the overcoming of great odds. By the end of this film, Nyles overcame his childish behavior and fear of change and Sarah overcame her fear of commitment and selfish nature. It only makes sense that when they fall in love and begin shedding the facade of who they used to be, that they see a remnant of a long lost past that has been given a second life.
I believe this theory is solidified when we see the Brontosauruses at the very end of the film when Nyles and Sarah are floating in the pool and the camera tilts up to the desert horizon. One last thing I want to mention on the subject of Sarah and Nyles is the concept of blowing themselves up while they are sucked in by the orb. Fire and explosions are often seen as metaphorical “cleansing”. When you completely decimate something old and turn it to ash, as with the legend of the Phoenix or slashing and burning crops, something new can grow. This is what is done with Sarah and Nyles’ relationship. They completely obliterate who they were so that who they were meant to be can bloom from the ashes of the past.
Although not explicitly shown, another relationship I want to discuss in this film is Roy and his family. At first, Roy seems disenchanted with the family life and wishes there was something more for him. He all but admits to Nyles the night they partied together that he can’t believe being married, having 2 kids and a home in the suburbs was it for him. Nothing seems new or exciting in his life anymore and that leads to his emotional fatigue. It isn’t until he begins to relive the same day, realizing he’ll never see his kids grow up or his wife age gracefully that he realizes just how much he’s missing. Roy comes to terms with his situation at the end not with anger and resentment but with love and admiration. Although his life may seem plain, he realizes that it’s much better than the alternative of being stuck in time and never being able to move forward.
In terms of relationships, I think it’s pretty brilliant how this film is not only about them but structures itself like the beginning of a relationship and the overall nature of them. For example, when Sarah and Nyles meet they are both in polar opposite positions. Nyles is in a relationship he is not committed to and Sarah has recently left a two year relationship she knew wouldn’t work but went through with it anyway because she didn’t want to be alone. Their romance begins with animosity as Nyles gets her stuck in the time loop, basically upending her life, they begin to court each other as they spend day after day in the loop and they break up when Nyles admits that he lied to her about never sleeping with her in the loops when she asked at the beginning. While they are detained on the side of the road by the police officer, Nyles admits that he’s slept with her hundreds of times in the loop. All he ever has to do is bail her out when she fumbles her speech and she sleeps with him in gratitude. Obviously hurt because he lied to her, Sarah resets the day by jumping in front of the semi. While they are “broken up”, Nyles sulks while Sarah spends all of her time trying to figure out how to leave the loop. When Sarah finally cracks it, instead of just leaving she asks Nyles to come with her. She obviously cares about him and wants to give their relationship a second chance. At first, Nyles is too afraid but, after some sage words of advice from Roy, he finds Sarah and admits he was and still is scared but he’d rather delve into the unknown with her than lose her forever. This whole sequence of events is representative of a modern and complex relationship.
Although I posited that the core theme of this film is relationships, it is also about loneliness and how relationships are a cure for it. As the film begins with Nyles, we see that his day is very lonely. His girlfriend is not only uninterested in being intimate with him but she is also very cold and dismissive. She is also in the wedding party and leaves him alone with a group of people he does not know. He cannot connect with anyone and no one seems interested in connecting with him. He is just another wedding guest. Sarah feels alone because she feels out of place. Because of a previously failed marriage, she is seen as a pariah to her family. Her family makes her feel very irresponsible so she takes on that role as well as that of a selfish loner. This causes her to act out in ways that range from forgetting that she had to give a speech at her sister’s wedding to sleeping with her sister’s fiance the day before said wedding. It isn’t until Sarah and Nyles find each other that they are tested and realize that they need to change in order to rid themselves of loneliness. Although we never find out why or how Nyles gets caught in the loop, there is a small but telling scene near the beginning of the film where his girlfriend asks him to “Not bring their drama here”. I’m only speculating, but I think they may have been fighting for a while before the wedding. Nyles’ obvious immaturity and contentment with being the way he is, I believe, is what gets him stuck in the loop. I find it interesting that it is only until Nyles brings someone into the loop with him and changes his ways that he is able to escape the loop.
Sarah, although a bit more mature than Nyles, has issues of her own. She ended a two year marriage because she wasn’t even committed to it, she’s been an unreliable daughter/sister and even had an affair with the man her younger sister is about to marry. In my opinion, Sarah had just as much to overcome as Nyles. Traveling outside of the mains in this film, there are a few side characters that continue the theme of loneliness. There is a strange older man that has a shooting range in his backyard that confided in Nyles about a woman he met, fell in love with and fathered a child with her but she took off before she had their kid. This character only comes back near the end of the film but, considering he lives alone and continues to let this part of his life take over his thoughts, it is fair to say that he is also lonely. Also, Roy embodies a sense of loneliness in how he feels about his marriage pre-time loop. He felt stuck in that “empty, bottomless pit” he once described as marriage until he got stuck in the loop. It isn’t until all characters of this film learn and grow in the loop that they realize loneliness doesn’t have to be an inevitability.
I absolutely loved Palm Springs. It is a science fiction romantic comedy that speaks volumes about relationships, emotional sacrifice and loneliness. This film is equal parts comedy and relatable drama wrapped with a time loop ribbon. All of the acting in this film is fantastic and, being a huge Andy Samberg fan, I was so happy to see the complexity of his character and acting in this film. I also really enjoyed how they did not get too bogged down in the science of being stuck in a time loop. Yes, they do show a montage of Sarah studying quantum physics but it blends so well into the overall plot of the story that it’s not at all distracting. I loved everything about this film and some of my favorite scenes were Sarah and Nyles clowning around each day in the time loop. If you like science fiction romantic comedies, the Lonely Island or just unique storytelling, I highly recommend giving this film a watch. It is a good time and authentically fun!
