Yes (Sally Potter, UK/USA, 95mins)
After Auschwitz there can be no poetry – Theodore Adorno
After Auschwitz there can only be poetry – Tony Harrison
Creative responses to traumatic events have always been problematic. For some, like Adorno, the sheer force and collective shock of an event such as The Holocaust makes it impossible for anyone to engage creatively ever again - in a world that has been scarred by such acts committed by a human hand, there is no room for trifles such as poetry or creative thought. Harrison, however, turns this idea on its head and believes that the only way to deal with trauma is to react creatively. For him, these acts cannot be understood in rational ways and need to be filtered through creativity to make any sense at all.
Sally Potter started to write Yes shortly after 9/11 and, although the film is not directly about the event, it hangs heavy with the confusion, anger and distress of the days immediately following the attacks. In part, Yes is a thoughtful and poignant film about the break-up of a relationship between successful molecular biologist (simply known as “she” and played with sparseness by Joan Allen) and a British MP (played by Sam Neill). It is also a film about division – whether it be sexual, religious or cultural. Joan Allen’s character is desperately unhappy and even though she is living with her husband, she is isolated to the point of being extricated from the relationship. She meets a Lebanese man (simply known as “he” and played by Simon Abkarian) at a function and so begins an intense relationship that liberates her from her husband’s clutches, only to place her in the centre of a war of words and ideologies.
On the surface of it, Yes is a simple love story. That the man is a Muslim and from the Middle East and the woman from America complicates matters somewhat, as does Potter’s decision to write the film in Iambic Pentameter – the form of verse that Shakespeare favoured. For Potter, the decision to write the film in poetry, rather than in naturalistic speech perhaps suggests that she is more in tune with the ideas of Harrison, rather than Adorno, but it also makes Yes a particularly frustrating and pretentious experiment, rather than an engaging and poignant metaphor for our global state of play.
Potter seems confused about what she wants Yes to be. Opening with the philosophical ramblings of the woman’s cleaner (Shirley Henderson) – an all seeing, all knowing Greek chorus-like voice to the action, and continuing with the story of the growing sexual, emotional and intellectual bonds between the Muslim man and the American woman, the film is a strange hybrid of many styles and ideas, none of them adding up to anything particularly significant.
Potter’s film does have moments of beauty, profundity and power, but these are all too infrequent. A heated conversation between the man and the woman in an underground car park lays bare their differences and, for the only time in the film, makes clear the distinctions and similarities between their relationship and the ongoing war and tensions between the West and the Muslim world. Likewise, a scene of the woman at the bedside of her dying Aunt (Sheila Hancock) is beautifully touching and is Potter at her very best. The stillness of the scene coupled with the aching power of the dying woman’s voiceover is almost too much to bear. Potter also utilises dance in a surprising and innovative way. Having started as a dancer and choreographer, it is not surprise that she understands movement and in Yes, she uses dance when words fail – as a non verbal but deeply poetic form of communication.
Although there are fleeting moments of carefully crafted brilliance in Yes, it fails to live up to the power of its individual parts and at best is a brave but self-absorbed reaction to our current global crisis.
Review by Barnaby Welch
After Auschwitz there can only be poetry – Tony Harrison
Creative responses to traumatic events have always been problematic. For some, like Adorno, the sheer force and collective shock of an event such as The Holocaust makes it impossible for anyone to engage creatively ever again - in a world that has been scarred by such acts committed by a human hand, there is no room for trifles such as poetry or creative thought. Harrison, however, turns this idea on its head and believes that the only way to deal with trauma is to react creatively. For him, these acts cannot be understood in rational ways and need to be filtered through creativity to make any sense at all.
Sally Potter started to write Yes shortly after 9/11 and, although the film is not directly about the event, it hangs heavy with the confusion, anger and distress of the days immediately following the attacks. In part, Yes is a thoughtful and poignant film about the break-up of a relationship between successful molecular biologist (simply known as “she” and played with sparseness by Joan Allen) and a British MP (played by Sam Neill). It is also a film about division – whether it be sexual, religious or cultural. Joan Allen’s character is desperately unhappy and even though she is living with her husband, she is isolated to the point of being extricated from the relationship. She meets a Lebanese man (simply known as “he” and played by Simon Abkarian) at a function and so begins an intense relationship that liberates her from her husband’s clutches, only to place her in the centre of a war of words and ideologies.
On the surface of it, Yes is a simple love story. That the man is a Muslim and from the Middle East and the woman from America complicates matters somewhat, as does Potter’s decision to write the film in Iambic Pentameter – the form of verse that Shakespeare favoured. For Potter, the decision to write the film in poetry, rather than in naturalistic speech perhaps suggests that she is more in tune with the ideas of Harrison, rather than Adorno, but it also makes Yes a particularly frustrating and pretentious experiment, rather than an engaging and poignant metaphor for our global state of play.
Potter seems confused about what she wants Yes to be. Opening with the philosophical ramblings of the woman’s cleaner (Shirley Henderson) – an all seeing, all knowing Greek chorus-like voice to the action, and continuing with the story of the growing sexual, emotional and intellectual bonds between the Muslim man and the American woman, the film is a strange hybrid of many styles and ideas, none of them adding up to anything particularly significant.
Potter’s film does have moments of beauty, profundity and power, but these are all too infrequent. A heated conversation between the man and the woman in an underground car park lays bare their differences and, for the only time in the film, makes clear the distinctions and similarities between their relationship and the ongoing war and tensions between the West and the Muslim world. Likewise, a scene of the woman at the bedside of her dying Aunt (Sheila Hancock) is beautifully touching and is Potter at her very best. The stillness of the scene coupled with the aching power of the dying woman’s voiceover is almost too much to bear. Potter also utilises dance in a surprising and innovative way. Having started as a dancer and choreographer, it is not surprise that she understands movement and in Yes, she uses dance when words fail – as a non verbal but deeply poetic form of communication.
Although there are fleeting moments of carefully crafted brilliance in Yes, it fails to live up to the power of its individual parts and at best is a brave but self-absorbed reaction to our current global crisis.
Review by Barnaby Welch
posted by Barnaby at 3:44 PM
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