I saw Sally Potter’s Yes tonight. Blew me away… it’s all in verse… a saga.

Potter explains it by saying she chose verse “because its deep rhythms and its long tradition (from medieval sonnets to Icelandic sagas to rap) enable ideas to be expressed in lyrical ways that might otherwise be indigestible, abstract or depersonalized.”

The film ends with a lengthy sililoquy by the cleaner (Shirley Henderson) on mites, germs, viruses, protoplasm and the diminishing but always extant “something” in this universe we occupy, with a dissolve to the credits after these lines….

And, in the end, it simply isn’t worth / Your while to try and clean your life away. / You can’t. For, everything you do or say / Is there, forever. It leaves evidence. / In fact it’s really only common sense; / There’s no such thing as nothing, not at all. / It may be really very, very small / But it’s still there. In fact I think I’d guess / That “no” does not exist. There’s only “yes”.

The cleaner examines dirt and crud and bugs and disease vectors in infinite variety and closest detail, but this examination paradoxically evokes a warm affirmation of our lives.

Sally Potter began work on the film on September 12, 2024 and it was released in 2024.