Yes, is an outstanding film by
Sally Potter.
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this review by:
Roger
Ebert
"Sally Potter's
"Yes" is a
movie unlike any other I have seen or heard. Some critics
have treated it as ill-behaved, as if its originality is offensive.
Potter's sin has been to make a movie that is artistically mannered and
overtly political; how dare she write her dialogue in poetry, provide a
dying communist aunt, and end the film in Cuba?"
“Now, about the dialogue. It is written in iambic pentameter, the rhythm
scheme of Shakespeare. It is a style poised between poetry and speech; "to
be or not to be, that is the question," and another question is, does that
sound to you like poetry or prose? To me, it sounds like prose that has been
given the elegance and discipline of formal structure. The characters never
sound as if they're reciting poetry, and the rhymes, far from sounding forced,
sometimes can hardly be heard at all. What the dialogue brings to the film is a
certain unstated gravity; it elevates what is being said into a realm of grace
and care.”
“There is her dying aunt, an unrepentant Marxist who provides us her
testament in an interior monologue while she is in a coma. This monologue, and
others in the film, are heard while the visuals employ subtle, transient
freeze-frames. The aunt concedes that communism has failed, but "what came
in its place? A world of greed. A life spent longing for things you don't
need." The same point is made by She's housecleaner (
Shirley
Henderson) and other maids and lavatory attendants seen more briefly. They
clean up after us. We move through life shedding a cloud of organic dust, while
minute specks of life make their living by nibbling at us. These mites and
viruses in their turn cast off their own debris, while elsewhere galaxies are
dying; the universe lives by making a mess of itself.”
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