“Gaza is like a magnetic field that both attracts and repels you”: Nadav Lapid’s film “Yes” is a furious reaction to the catastrophe of October 7

Rarely does a film so immediately convey the urgency under which it was created. "Yes," the fifth production by Israeli film director Nadav Lapid, is a furious reaction to the catastrophe that has befallen Israel and Gaza since October 7, 2023.

With seismographic sensitivity and feverish virtuosity, the camera traces a process of corrosion that threatens to corrode all aspects of life. Adorno might say that there is no right film in a wrong life: the state of war into which the country is sinking makes every nuance, every shade, seem amoral. The colors are oversaturated, and the pulsating soundtrack creates tension even in everyday scenes.

In the first part of "Yes," the director uses excessive scenes to paint a picture of an elite that has lost all sense of direction: Y ("Yud" in Hebrew), a musician and performer (Ariel Bronz), and his wife Jasmine, a dancer (Efrat Dor), are the uncrowned royal couple of an Israeli establishment who enjoy themselves at orgiastic parties and yacht trips.

High-ranking army commanders and shady Russians are also invited, their outlines blurring in the strobe lights. The bass beats, and the consumption of sangria and cocaine blurs the lines between business and corruption. Prostitution is part of the savoir-vivre.

"Yes" takes on a political tone in the middle section, when Y is asked to compose a new national anthem. It should celebrate the rebirth of a Greater Israel built on the ruins of Gaza. After initially experiencing the war exclusively through breaking news on his cell phone screen, the musician decides to get in his car. He inspects the bombed-out coastal strip up close, on a hill where the camera pans to the plumes of smoke obscuring the horizon.

Filming the scene of the war was a central concern for him, the filmmaker said during a recent encounter: "Gaza is like a magnetic field that both attracts and repels you. I wanted to know what one of the worst acts of destruction of this century looks like when filmed from the perspective of those carrying it out."

October 7th triggered two opposing feelings in him. On the one hand, as a director, if you take your profession seriously, you have to find your own voice in every situation. On the other hand, "reality has become unfilmable."

Although Lapid has lived in France for several years, he returned to Israel immediately after the massacre. There, everything suddenly took on a new significance: "It was as if objective reality suddenly appeared in a different form. Whether I was filming the face of a baby, a loved one, or the sea – everything seemed imbued with a new, unimagined power."

The pull that has gripped the streets of Tel Aviv since 2023 can also be recreated on screen. The camera, often handheld, breaks up the space with frenetic movements, and the characters' needs and relationships—sex, food, employment—are always portrayed as mechanical transactions.

The availability of eroticized bodies serves to illustrate the power imbalance. Only servility allows one to defend one's privacy against the outside world: "Happiness lies in submission," Y whispers to his newborn as he takes the baby on a beach outing.

Lapid's pessimism about Israel's situation is palpable in every sequence. In countless shots, the blue and white of the flags dominates the color scheme; at the end of the film, Y's anthem, laced with vengeance and resentment, is performed by a children's choir. Isn't he isolated in his radical stance toward his homeland?

"The poet Dahlia Ravikovitch wrote back in the 1980s that we were a 'failed experiment,'" Lapid says. Usually, after a failure, one turns to a new project. However, this isn't possible with Israel. "It's like the sun: its rays cause cancer, but without them, there would be no life."

As unique as the film is in its poignancy, Lapid's exploration of the friction between Israel and the Diaspora touches on a topic he has already addressed in his previous films. Both Yoav in "Synonyms" (2019) and the main character in "Ahed's Knee" (2021) felt compelled to emigrate.

"Yes" is essentially an attempt to pack "the beauty and the horror, the terror and the seduction" into one film, Lapid concludes. The approval that resonates in the title should probably be understood as a willingness to take the tensions and fault lines that shape Israel's present into account to the last detail.

Yes: In cinemas from October 16th.