Nadav Lapid is making waves again with his latest film, ‘Yes‘, which premiered in the ‘Filmmakers’ Fortnight’ section at the Cannes Film Festival. It is his fifth feature film, and this time he has also taken on the full responsibility of writing the script, in addition to directing the film. A few years ago, Lapid, who lives in France, decided not to make films in and about Israel, at least for a while. ‘Yes‘ was conceived as a kind of contemporary version of István Szabó’s ‘Mephisto’, featuring a couple of artists (he is a musician, she is a dancer) ready to sell their souls and art to the devil embodied by the powerful and wealthy of our era. When October 7, 2023, happened and the war in Gaza broke, Lapid decided to rewrite the script and move the story to Israel. What resulted is a film that depicts national trauma and the way a very specific part of Israeli society reacts to what happened on October 7, 2023 and afterwards. It is a complex and extreme film that not only does not avoid controversy, but on the contrary, seeks it out.
The main character is called throughout the film ‘yod’ or ‘Y.’ – the initial of his first name. An initial, like Kafka’s hero, but also like the anonymous heroes of the shadow battles. It is the letter with which the names of the heroes in Nadav Lapid‘s previous films begin, always an alter-ego of the director. Y. and his wife Yardena live modestly in a small apartment in Tel Aviv and have an adorable little boy, born on October 8, 2023. ‘Yes‘ is composed of three parts, a sonata structure, if you will. The first part presents the two heroes leading an intense and debauched life, as if there were no tomorrow, in the company of the rich who pay them for all kinds of ‘entertainment’ services. Realities around shows up seldom in their lives, as flash-news on their phones screens. When Y. receives from an oligarch the task of composing a patriotic song, perhaps a new anthem, with heroic-vengeful lyrics, the two see in this proposal an opportunity to escape from their social condition. The second part, the one that I liked the most in the film, describes, at a much slower pace and with a much more subtle approach, Y’s ‘documentary’ journey. He crosses Israel from west to east together with Leah, his ex-girlfriend, whom he had not seen for many years. Leah is a translator and works for the Israeli PR, having access to documents unseen by the public or the press, about the horrors committed by the terrorists on October 7th. Will this information arm Y. with the pathos necessary to compose the song, or will it only deepen his moral and personal crisis? The third part brings back the accelerated pace, but also to the tendency to impose conclusions on the viewers. Will Y. compose the music for the anthem? Is the compromise only artistic or also personal?
The film is very interestingly made. Nadav Lapid knows what he wants to show and sometimes does it too emphatically to my taste. For example, I learn from an interview, the explicit indication for those screening the film in theaters is that the music be very intense, probably wanting to create an impact on the viewers similar to that felt by the participants at the party in the scenes that open the film. The editing is somewhere between alert and crazy. In the second part, however, Lapid proves that he knows how to narrate (well) and that his characters have psychological depth. One of the anthological scenes shows Y. on a hill near Gaza, ironically called ‘the hill of love’, filmed from an angle similar to that of Caspar David Friedrich’s famous painting, but looking not at a romantic landscape covered in clouds but at the war zone shaken by explosions and covered in dust. The actors are excellently chosen. Ariel Bronz, the interpreter of Y., is at his first feature film and lives his role with astonishing intensity. Efrat Dor and Naama Preis succeed, each, to create memorable roles. There are many very beautiful and interesting cinematic things in this film, and others that are questionable. Nadav Lapid‘s recent films are both very personal and the expression of a collective feeling, shared by a part of Israeli society. They are like screams of almost unbearable intensity. Beyond the ideological positions, with which we may or disagree, what is questionable, in my opinion, is the film’s length of two and a half hours and the explicit extremism of some of the scenes. The audience reaches their own conclusions, the filmmakers do not have to yell at them for a long time to make them understand. Israeli society, the conflict with the world around them and the impact on the people who try to live here represent a complex universe, with an immense number of problems, which can be approached from multiple perspectives. Nadav Lapid presents in ‘Yes‘ only one of these multiple facets, from his personal perspective. Others will follow, I hope in films at least as good. Dialogue is necessary on all levels, including in cinema.