‘Yes’ Review: Nadav Lapid Pushes Satire to the Brink in His Most Provocative Film Yet

Even by the already volatile standards of Nadav Lapid’s work—best known for Synonyms and Ahed’s Knee—Yes is an intense, unhinged experience. The film operates as a savage, brutal political satire about how Israel processes the ongoing crisis surrounding Gaza. As a piece of critical cinema, it centers on characters who are largely abrasive, even repellent—figures that, in keeping with Lapid’s perpetually on-the-verge aesthetic, can feel deliberately overwhelming. What emerges is a pathetic microcosm of a country—or at least a portion of its population—exposing its worst instincts in the aftermath of October 7, 2023.

Y (Ariel Bronz) is a pianist in a relationship with a dancer, Jasmine (Efrat Dor). Before that date—and, crucially, after it as well—the two are depicted living in a state of relentless hedonism: sex, parties, drugs, alcohol, and then more of the same in an endless loop. Nothing seems to matter beyond that. Lapid indulges in the excess of this lifestyle, surrounding them with wealthy businessmen, Russian billionaires, and shadowy officials. So insulated are they that when news breaks on their phones of a deadly attack in the south of the country, near Gaza, they barely register it. They carry on as if nothing has happened, a reaction that, unsettlingly, doesn’t feel entirely implausible.

Gradually, their proximity to powerful figures draws them deeper into opaque networks of influence and control, in a film that is anything but realist. Once the scale of the attack becomes undeniable, both characters come to embrace what the title suggests: to say yes—yes, ken—and align themselves with those in power. Y goes so far as to compose a song that becomes a kind of national leitmotif in this moment of crisis. The song, inevitably, is called “Yes.” And it works: it becomes a ubiquitous anthem.

From there—echoing, in part, a real-life controversial song that served a similar function—the narrative spirals into misadventures, conflicts, escapes, and mounting instability, as the song spreads and nationalism intensifies. At a certain point, Y begins to feel conflicted about the monster he has helped create and attempts, however tentatively, to push back. But the film offers little room for nuance: the logic of the world it depicts allows for only binary choices—inside or outside, for or against, yes or no. This new tension, at least for the protagonist, propels the film forward with the same fervor and manic energy, though now tinged with a growing sense of doubt.

This is a film engineered to provoke—likely to be met with both applause and boos, especially since its stance may not register as clearly for all viewers. What it makes evident is that Lapid cannot respond to such an unhinged reality with restraint. It’s not in his nature to make a measured, subtle, or analytical film. Instead, he counters that chaos with his own: jittery, restless camerawork; a complete rejection of naturalism; and a barrage of satirical set pieces that often veer into something resembling the most surreal television sketches.

If there’s a weakness, it lies in the central duo, who can become exhausting over the film’s two-and-a-half-hour runtime—a common pitfall of satire pushed to extremes. Still, Lapid gradually complicates their grotesque, inflated portrayal, introducing more ambiguous and unsettling moments in which they begin to confront, however partially, what they’ve become complicit in.

With its biting observations, stray caustic lines, and sequences that feel closer to Terry Gilliam than to anything grounded in realism, Lapid crafts an ambitious, deranged film—one that occasionally gets tangled in its own need to “express” something about an almost ungraspable reality. At one point, a character reflects: “Israelis grew up asking, ‘How can people live normally while perpetrating horror?’», a question often directed at Palestinians. «Well, now they’ve become the answer.”