Yes: Nadav Lapid Strikes strong (critic)
In a nervous and intranquille film, Nadav Lapid follows the moral dilemma of an Israeli artist in his post-client country on October 7. The result is a deliberately outraged drama that strikes hard. Very strong.
“There are only two words in the world: yes and no. Which one do you choose? “We hear here. For or against. No “maybe” or “I don’t know”. Living in a country at war (Israel in this case) is completely committing. Y., the hero of Nadav Lapid sorts out of double fictional that the 50 -year -old Israeli filmmaker lodges film in film since Synonyms (2019) and the knee of Ahed (2021), lives in a permanent tension locked in a schizophrenic space. Violence is felt viscerally but almost seems to go without saying, like a habit to take. Y. accommodates it. Not Nadav Lapid.
This status quo, the filmmaker refuses him in his flesh and his soul. Looking at the politics of his country for a long time, he has left his native land for Paris, made more and more nervous and uncompromising films. In Yeshis Y. is a musician who lives private shows for rich notables. He forms a duet with Yasmin, his wife dancer. October 7 attacks weaken and break the spirits. Chaos paradoxically requires an additional euphoria. Dance, sing, exult to forget. Y. and give the change there. So when you ask the first to put music a pro-Tsahal propaganda clip where young Israelis embrigated are in substance to “burn Gaza”, Y. hesitates and ends up saying … yes.
The involvement of this “yes” is both the tension of the story, its internal rage but especially the poison which cracks the very alloy of the film. These are beings, things and thought in a maelström. Like the recent eddington of Ari Aster, Nadav Lapid takes the ambient cacophony in arms, is placed on the edge of the precipice, constantly on the breach … But where Aster is overlooking his characters, observer hidden behind the assurance of his staging, Lapid is one with them, doubt, goes from “no” to “no”. The very mobile camera constantly questions its relationship to things. The frame is never stable. “I have to love what I see …” Conversely, Yet Y.
Tapping radicality is never touting. The words also slam, fill the missing images. Witness This monologue of a young woman describing the atrocities of Hamas perpetrated on Israeli civilians on October 7. The flow is racing, deploys a sensitive force. It loads the atmosphere of electricity capable of igniting everything. In Synonyms, the hero, a young Israeli exiled in France, had to detoxify his native language to break the ties with the Honni country.
To unlearn words is to say, “no”. The filmmaker of Ahed’s knee accepted that he was asked questions at the end of the screening of his controversial film against the Hebrew state but warned: “There are no answers. The artist wants to be judged on his style, not on the words that dress his images. “No” too. The singer of yes must put music over the lyrics of a song goes to the war. He doesn’t say no. “Sorry to be loose mom!” He screams in heaven.
And then there is this emptiness impossible to fill, this counter-champ that does not come: Gaza, under the bombs. At the top of a Y hill. Distinguishes in the distance the whisper of the city in ruins but it remains unattainable. How to talk about what you don’t know? The film divided into chapters has gone from “the beautiful life” to “at night”, that is to be relative recklessness to death by betrayal. From his country Y. can not see anything. Neither do the film. More than to Eddington it is another recent film that we think of, the formidable laughter and the knife of Pedro Pinho which questioned the deaf violence of post-colonialism in Guinea-Bissau. Being there, investing in a space, accepting what presents itself to oneself before being remembered. To say yes is not without consequences.
From Nadav Lapid with Ariel Bronz, Efrat Dor, Naama Preis… Duration 2:30. Released September 17, 2025
