Yes
by Sally Potter
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Joan Allen, Sam Neill, Shirley Henderson, Simon Abkarian, Wil JohnsonDirector: Sally Potter
Brand: Sony
Writer: Sally Potter
Producer: Andrew Fierberg
Producer: Cedric Jeanson
Producer: Christopher Sheppard
Producer: Diane Gelon
Producer: Fisher Stevens
Producer: Frank Cabrera
DVD: Region Code 99
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1; French (Dubbed)
Format: AC-3, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: Anamorphic Widescreen, 1.85:1
Running Time: 100 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2005-11-08
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
Movie Reviews of Yes
Movie Review: "..."
Summary: 5 Stars
"..."
Every now and then I bump into something astoundingly refreshing and exceptionally thoughtful that renders speechlessness within me. Yes simply enters the screen visually and auditory, in a way, that sweeps the audience off their feet into a brilliant cinematic experience. On occasion, it feels a little like the free spirited filmmaking of the French New Wave and Jean-Luc Godard's innovative film such as A Woman is a Woman (1961) and Masculin, Féminin (1966), and Tout va Bien (1972). Yet, the director Sally Potter remains true to her own vision, as her visual feast is like nothing done before. It is a sensible juxtaposition of past revolutionary cinema and succulently invigorating filmmaking of Potter that enters a contemporary society with all of its issues and dilemmas.
Artistically, Potter presses present-day issues through an exceedingly antagonistic venture where the characters converge in daily drama and verse that in its length matches Coleridge's The Rime of the Ancient Mariner. Amidst the poetic dialogues, the character's personas take shape through thoughts and actions while the words flow effortlessly like running water over a smooth rock. Through clever cinematography and symbolic framing of the characters in the chosen environment Potter's presents strong notion that the crisis does not emerge through their conversations, but their actions, history, values, morals, and beliefs. It is the moment when an action clashes with another individual's acquired cognitive disposition where a conflict arises despite moments of harmonious unity.
The sound of a vacuum cleaner ignites the story, as the gray floating screen eventually displays microscopic dust mites and particles swerving in a chaotic manner to aerial pull until it is turned off. Symbolically, the opening suggests the notion of Newton's Laws of motion (inertia, dynamics, and reciprocal actions), which Potter is about to apply to human beings in their way of interacting in the story. The bigger question is who pushed the on and off button on the vacuum cleaner, as it is never displayed on the screen. This might reveal a philosophically spiritual question, as it hints towards the idea of divine intervention. Nonetheless, the audience will assume it is the cleaner (Shirley Henderson) who delivers an analogously existential debate through her cleaning, which she refers to as an illusion. This is a mere three minutes into the film, but Potter has successfully indicated her intentional direction with the story. It will deal with people and their interactions while their experiences and knowledge will help color their existence.
The main character, the scientist She (Joan Allen) is married to the politician Anthony (Sam Neill) that together offer a symbolic idea of who is in control of the power. The relationship is strained to the ultimate point; as Anthony has cheated on her while he squelches her objections with complete emotional control. In retrospect, there is more than this in the scene; She knows, but Anthony controls. A thought of this should be considered in regards to the nations and who govern the people. Yet, when She thinks there is no hope, He (Simon Abkarian) appears like a subtle breeze on a late summer eve with tender words she has not heard in many years.
She and He enter a passionate love affair, as she does not receive the love that a living organism desires and he has no one to embrace in his lonely arms. Through She and He, whose names might be a spiritual reference to the beginning of mankind, the audience gets to explore the collision of opposite issues - rich and poor, man and woman, togetherness and loneliness, knowledge and ignorance, youth and elderly, nurture and nature, love and hate, care and neglect, servant and ruler, and death and life. It is within these overlapping moments where Potter strings up an intriguing love story across borders, as She is an Irish Catholic while He is an Arabic Muslim that together face the social inertia of prejudice and narrow-mindedness.
Yes presents a heavy viewing that requires, maybe more than one screening, as it provides strong social contrasting through the characters in the film. The camerawork shows signs of perfection, as it does not intend to be perfect in the way it points out the human imperfections. The use of surveillance cameras and other visually technical approaches enhances the cinematic moment together with the stunning mise-en-scene. For example, the supper scene between She and Anthony brings to mind the meeting between two adversaries that cannot settle on peace. The color tones also accentuate the mood of the scene whether it is passionate, or detached. Potter has truly committed herself to cross borders into a place where everyone will find something offensive. However, it is her intention, as she desires the audience to experience the same journey that He and She do, as they seek happiness and unity.
In the end, Potter shows the audience that film is not simply a sequence of lines memorized by actors set in a probable environment, but an artistic journey that possess myriads of possibilities. It is within these possibilities where the audience will uncover a true contemporary gem that will leave the audience dumbfounded, as contemplation seizes its grip over the viewer.
Summary of Yes
YES - DVD MovieIt's unsurprising that a movie written in rhyming verse would have stilted or self-conscious moments--but the sumptuous beauty, sinuous rhythms, and cinematic intricacies of Yes may astonish viewers who expect something stuffy or antiquarian. The plot is little more than an affair between an unnamed Irish-American biologist (Joan Allen, once the queen of repression in The Ice Storm, now becoming an art-house sexpot in this and Off the Map) and an unnamed Middle-Eastern chef (Simon Abkarian, Ararat), yet the movie explores just about everything: Marriage, religion, international politics, motherhood, and the nature of zero, while travelling from London to Belfast to Beirut to Havana. Writer/director Sally Potter (Orlando, The Tango Lesson) has enormous ambitions; Yes abounds with complex ideas and daring flourishes, both verbal and visual, juxtaposing the austere and the erotic, intellect and grief. If not everything succeeds, what doesn't is more than made up for by what does. Also featuring Sam Neill (The Piano, Jurassic Park) as Allen's aloof husband and Shirley Henderson (Topsy-Turvy) as a housecleaner with a philosophical perspective on dirt. --Bret Fetzer
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