Bollywood: Palm Springs: Every Day Shown In The Loop

Palm Springs is set in a time loop where Andy Samberg's Nyles and Cristin Milotti's Sarah are constantly forced to relive the wedding day of Sarah's sister, Tala, over the course of a seemingly infinite number of days. Nyles has long since given up counting the days, resigning himself to being trapped in a meaningless existence forever. Through a series of cycles, Palm Springs shows Sarah's adjustment from frantically trying to escape the loop to enjoying its possibilities to finally finding a way to use the time wisely.

By the time Palm Springs begins, Nyles has already been trapped in the time loop for a long time, enough to have experimented with all the possibilities of a consequence-free life and gotten bored of them. Screenwriter Andy Siara has suggested that Nyles could have been in the loop for as long as forty years, meaning that the days the movie briefly flashes back to are just a few out of over ten thousand–even longer than Samberg spent on Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Sarah, with more initiative and more reason to avoid waking up on that morning, is in the loop for less time but still a considerable number of days.

The Palm Springs time loop is, as the characters find out, not based on any kind of moral judgment but rather caused by a portal in a nearby desert cave, which is unearthed by an earthquake during the wedding day. Sarah is able to eventually discover a way out, by blasting her and Nyles out of the cave at an opportune moment.

Here's every day they were stuck in the time loop shown in the movie, not the earlier days where only Nyles (and Roy, played by J. K. Simmons) are stuck in the loop. There are also two montages that suggest a greater number of days passing. For this reason, the total count of days depicted in the Palm Springs movie doesn't depict how long Nyles and Sarah spend in the time loop, but does give an idea of how well the movie establishes a timeline in depicting a long stretch of time which is just one day.

The first day depicted in the film - like the ones Nyles has been through before - includes Sarah giving a failed toast at the wedding, Misty cheating on Nyles with the wedding officiant, and Nyles attempting to hook up with Sarah. Unlike past days, this one sees Roy arrive in the desert to shoot at Nyles with a bow and arrow, driving him into the cave and leading Sarah to follow him and enter the time loop herself, resulting in Samberg and Milotti's characters being stuck in the Palm Springs time loop together.

Day 2 sees Sarah realizing that she has repeated yesterday and confronting Nyles. The noisy argument causes Tala to trip and break her teeth, creating a crisis before the wedding. Nyles provides a brief explanation and Sarah, looking to reverse the process, goes back into the cave.

On the third day, Sarah tries to escape from the time loop by leaving town, driving back to her home in Texas. This proves to be unsuccessful, with her falling asleep immediately afterward and waking up back in the hotel. Nyles attends the wedding again, quietly drinking.

The fourth day features Nyles explaining the rules of Palm Springs' time loop on a long drive with Sarah. She further tests the limits of the time loop by driving into a truck to commit suicide, but still wakes up in the same hotel room the next day.

Day 5 has Nyles providing a further explanation of the time loop and his experience in it. This includes his hook-ups with various members of the wedding party and how he brought Roy into the time loop, earning his grudge. Sarah decides that the best way to escape the time loop is to perform a selfless act, and does this by whispering something to Tala at the wedding. Based on later revelations in the plot, this is likely a confession that she slept with Abe, Tala's soon-to-be husband, the night before. However, the loop is not trying to teach any moral lesson, and Sarah remains stuck in it.

What follows is the first of Palm Springs' montages, a staple of The Lonely Island's comedic works. Sarah decides that, being unable to escape the time loop, she should try to enjoy its possibilities with Nyles. This includes stealing (and crashing) a plane, doing their best to start a fight at the nearby saloon, giving each other amateur tattoos, and planting dynamite in the wedding cake. This montage concludes with Sarah throwing a "Happy Millionth Birthday" party for Nyles. Based on the images of Nyles and Sarah waking up, them dying, and the sun setting, there are at least seven distinct days depicted in the film, but it is likely that the actual time was much longer than a week.

The first day depicted after the montage, and the thirteenth overall, sees Nyles and Sarah take psychedelic mushrooms and camp out in the desert. Sarah tries to get him to open up, while Nyles sees dinosaurs roaming the timp loop desert. The two end up sleeping together, which sets off a change in their relationship and in the plot.

In the fallout of sleeping together, Sarah and Nyles fight during a drive in the desert. The two are arrested by Roy posing as a cop, and then by a real cop. Sarah escapes the argument by running in front of a truck.

Nyles wakes up to find Sarah missing. At the wedding that night, Nyles realizes that Abe slept with Sarah and confronts him over it. Later, it's revealed that Sarah also confronted Abe in the morning and went to a local diner to begin researching quantum physics.

This is the second time Palm Springs uses a montage to depict a number of days passing. The next day, Nyles lets Abe and Tala marry in blissful ignorance. He takes advantage of Palm Springs' time loop to travel to Roy's home in Irvine, where he learns that his former nemesis has mellowed out and accepted his life in the loop. In the meantime, Sarah continues studying quantum physics at the same diner, also conducting experiments with a goat to see if her theory will work. The montage shows Sarah waking up five times, but it is likely that it took her much longer to obtain an expert-level understanding of quantum physics.

Sarah finally reunites with Nyles and proposes her plan to escape the loop. Nyles is initially reluctant to go along with it, fearful that it will work and he'll have to return to his real life, which he hated. Sarah gives her final, heartfelt toast to Tala and Abe. Nyles joins her at the last minute and the two blast themselves out of the cave, finally freeing themselves from the loop.

The final scene of the film shows Sarah and Nyles finally experiencing the following day, and setting about their new life– although some people may still be trapped in Palm Springs' time loop. Altogether, the movie depicts 21 days on screen, or about three weeks. However, the two montages suggest that Nyles and Sarah repeat the same day a far greater number of times. If anything, Palm Springs is an example of how editing can create a much greater sense of time passing through depicting a relatively small number of days.

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July 19, 2021 at 12:13AM

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