Palm Springs is easily my favourite movie of 2020. Not that the year has had the greatest selection of films with a rampant pandemic still leaving the country in shambles. Despite that, this film is tough to beat as it encapsulates an emotional rollercoaster that has started since the year 2020 came about our calendars. Filled with so much fun and sorrow, both the film and this year have given me a certain optimism in the fate of my future—whether it is bringing me more horror or more excitement for me. Palm Springs leaves a lasting impression in thoughts of our very unpredictable future and does not hold back on how love is just as messy the quantum mechanical model of an atom and our concept of time.
The film follows Andy Samberg starring as Nyles at his girlfriend’s best friend’s wedding reception. It may seem difficult to see Samberg outside his role as the immature detective from Brooklyn Nine-Nine; yet, he easily slips into his new role in this film as a man that seems to have been exhausted of the life he has had. The film starts off at the morning of the wedding. Nyles already looking burnt-out for the day. He apathetically going about the day wearing only beach shorts and a Hawaiian shirt for a very formal wedding. There, he meets Sarah played by the ever lovely Cristin Milioti. They form a connection with their chemistry as one thing leads to another, and then they are in the middle of the desert hooking up. But all of a sudden, Nyles is shot with an arrow leaving Sarah very confused as to what is happening. Nyles hides and attempts to crawl away towards a cave that seems to be glowing from the inside. Sarah follows after him as Nyles only pleads her not to follow him inside. The next thing she knew, she is back in the bed she had slept in earlier in the morning with a wedding that is still about to start.
Nyles has been stuck in a time loop; and now, it looks Sarah is now stuck with him. More importantly, they are stuck with each other now and maybe for the rest of their lives. Both of them will have to figure out how to live through the endless loops, maybe find a chance to break the cycle, and also if there is really something more between the two of them.
There is a poignant tone at the revelation of Nyle’s exhaustion. God only knows how many times has the day loop backed for him already. Nyles cannot even remember already. Progress seems like it has halted for him. He cannot even die since he will just wake back in the same morning. He could have even bonded with anyone truly until Sarah got stuck with him as well. It feels like an underlying horror that is feeding on Nyles each day. Love would not matter to him. Career would not help him. In his infinite time cycling through his predicament, he has learned to accept his meaninglessness and the helplessness of his situation. He’d developed his own structure and life in this limbo. Something Sarah could only just imagine.
But now, with Sarah in his life, his own future and a possibility of a future with her threatens the life he has built for himself. Then, with a change to break the time loop. It furthers drives Nyles away from this unfamiliar and infinitely uncertain future outside the same repeating day even. Sarah wanting to leave out of this hellhole and Nyles wanting her to stay with him in a place where their relationship already seems at its peak. Nyles is frightened at the uncertainty of a life he has already forgotten. It’s like, “Why fix something that does not seem to be broken, right?” Ultimately, the film fights this notion and raising the question of an uncertainty future and the glimmers of hope it still provides. It points its intriguing question towards its romantic coupling and bridging it to the grounds of soft science fiction a time-loop film presents. While the science prevalent in the film is mostly left vague and only convoluted at best, but so is the nature of quantum physics—unsurprisingly, just like the nature of love.
The love that Nyles and Sarah could only go so far. Their love might have only been from being the only two people stuck in their time loop. There might not be any more of it left once they leave. There are millions of other people to love. There might be someone else for the two of them maybe if only they looked hard enough. Things most people worry too much about in their relationships: their looks, the compatibility, the image of a future. Nyles’ circumstance intensifies and magnifies the crisis of such romanticisations of love. Love could always only be unpredictable. As in the physical sciences, the only thing constant is change.
Palms Springs surprises to be such an intricate film about the uncertainty of any romance. In its purest and rawest form, it can still be the best of most quirky romcoms. Through a deep dive, it finds the cracks that attempt to horrify us from connecting with others and fixes them. It lets you bask in the absurdity of the uncertainty of the future and not on the familiarity of the present nor the rigidity of the past. The film lets you ponder on towards what comes next and excite at the best possibilities: be it dinosaurs finally coming back to roam the earth or the luck of finding love while stuck in endless limbo.
Nas Velasco 