Director: Nadav Lapid
Writer: Nadav Lapid
Stars: Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor, Aleksei Serebryakov
Synopsis: A jazz musician and his dancer wife Jasmine offer their artistic talents to help their nation after the October 7 attacks, with the musician tasked with composing a new national anthem.
There may not be a more angry film released this year than Nadav Lapid’s Yes (Ken). The Israeli writer/director is fed up with Western countries’ blind allegiances (or, more aptly, bootlicking), following the attacks of October 7th, and with the normalized complicity of his own country for the continued barbarity committed against Palestinians. Actually, it’s not necessarily anger, but exhaustion. It’s always the same thing that’s been happening, way before October 7th, which has further exacerbated tensions between outspoken critics of Israel and its adherents, especially in the age of social media disinformation and the rise of Artificial Intelligence.
As expected, a film that was partly financed by Israel to criticize the country’s unconscionable actions towards Palestinians had a difficult time finding distribution. Don’t let the opening logos fool you, Lapid is very much not in favor of Benjamin Netanyahu’s ongoing dehumanization campaign and his labeling of critics of the right-wing government’s actions as antisemites. It won’t take long before you realize this fact, even if you’ve not seen his more politically-driven works, such as Synonyms and Ahed’s Knee.
Similar to Radu Jude’s Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Lapid employs maximalism (at least for the first or three chapters in this 150-minute satire) to rebuke complicity. He puts us in the shoes of Y (Ariel Bronz), a musician who prefers to party all day and night long with his wife, Yasmin (Efrat Dor), rather than get his head out of the sand. Living in the modern city of Tel Aviv, Y isn’t worrying about what’s occurring beyond the wall that separates Israel and Palestine, even after October 7th. The strong sentiment of patriotism in Israel makes him blindly believe in the military’s campaigns within the Gaza Strip and actively distrust any news that perhaps hints at anything other than what the IDF has officially stated via press releases.
After all, turning on his phone and being reminded of the constant horrors in Gaza prevents him from living in the idyll promised by the seascapes of Tel Aviv. In that regard, Yes feels very much in conversation with Jonathan Glazer’s The Zone of Interest, where audiences are forced to hear (and feel) dehumanization occurring right next door to where the protagonists live, while the perpetrators turn a blind eye to what is unfolding right outside their windows. That said, audiences won’t see Gaza until the second half of the picture, where Y is hired by a powerful Russian billionaire (played by Anora’s Aleksei Serebryakov) to write a new national anthem for Israel to rally the country following October 7th.
The first chapter of Yes is a little too exhausting in its in-your-face visual language. One bravura musical setpiece, scored to Max Rieger’s version of “The Ketchup Song,” features dizzyingly expressive camera moves that evoke the day-to-day chaos of tuning out the internal and external noise of living in Tel Aviv. However, by the time Lapid reaches the film’s second chapter, he dials down the heightened colors and stroboscopic effects to recenter his drama on a protagonist who, in making the vow to say “yes” to everything that comes his way, fails to realize what goes on beyond the wall. He will have to reckon with his choices when he eventually comes face-to-face with the clouds of smoke that enshroud Gaza.
At that pivotal point, any ounce of absurdist humor Lapid had drawn out in the first chapter completely dissipates, and Yes begins to confront audiences with their own complicity. Most Westerners who live far away from the Middle East might not have a broader understanding of what’s occurring as opposed to someone at the heart of the conflict, which may be true, but their continued ignorance of the Israeli government’s deliberate and systematic dehumanization of Palestinians allows it to continue. Lapid has had enough of Israel’s blind allegiance to its right-wing government and the ignorance that most in contemporary society have of what’s happening in his place of birth.
Despite currently living in France for several years, Lapid’s feelings towards Israel as a state – and, by extension, Tel Aviv as a city – are incredibly complex. He may find occasional glimpses of beauty in the city’s modern architecture and the seascapes surrounding it, but the decay at its center is always threatening to crawl back up. But he doesn’t have any complex feelings about the ongoing war crimes committed by Israel’s government, and boldly dismantles the propaganda campaign at the heart of their operation in Gaza. Thinking that he will find inspiration for his song by looking at the current decimation, Y travels to see the destruction first-hand, and begins to perhaps regret his blind allegiance to Israel’s elites after surrendering to them for monetary gains. In that moment of regret, a voiceover narration tells audiences, “The Israelis, who grew up with the question, ‘How could people live normally while perpetrating horror?’ have themselves become the answer.”
This becomes the central thesis of Lapid’s third chapter, which presents a scene of real-life horror. The song Y has been writing is not fictitious, but, in fact, exists, as a “distorted” version of Haim Gouri’s “The Brotherhood.” The song was rewritten by an activist group named “The Civil Front,” now dubbed “The Song of the Victory Generation.” While the original version of the song is not heard, this distorted rendition contains lyrics such as “Over the beaches of Gaza falls the Autumn night. Planes are bombing. Destroy! Destroy!” and “In one year, there will be nothing living there, and we’ll return safely to our homes. In one year, we’ll annihilate them all, then we’ll come home to plow our fields.”
If that doesn’t make you sick to your stomach, the song is performed by children.
Nothing more needs to be said. Lapid pulls no punches, because he’s got none left. With Yes, he wants audiences not to simply think about what’s currently unfolding before their eyes, but to understand that this is the price of complicity or of staying “indifferent” to what’s happening in the Middle East. And while Israel certainly gained lots of support following October 7th, which allowed its government to shape a narrative they’ve been wanting to construct for a long time, and for Western powers to give Netanyahu powers to do what he’s always wanted, the tides have turned. More people are speaking out against this corrupt war criminal and his government, which not only wants to decimate an entire population but threatens peace around the world.
It’s sad, though, that the world is screwed – and we’ve collectively allowed it to reach that point. We should all feel shame for what the powers that be are doing to apparently make the world “safe,” because nothing in their actions guarantees safety or peace anytime soon…
