Rakan Mayasi’s Wedding Scene Steps Out of the Story
Rakan Mayasi’s debut feature “Yesterday the Eye Didn’t Sleep” premiered in Cannes’ Un Certain Regard with a treatment of a Bedouin community in Lebanon’s Bekaa Valley.
Many critics singled out its wedding scene for its visual beauty and the emotional shift it conveys. Mayasi says that in that scene he allowed himself to get out of the narrative, changing the rhythm and playing with a psychedelic approach. It is never really stated that this is the actual wedding, and the moment one sister, Jawahir, is revealed as a bride is very theatrical.
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Dropping out of the narrative for a psychedelic set piece is a real risk: coherence usually pays the bill. In this case the gamble is the part critics keep pointing at, praised for beauty and for the emotional shift it produces.
But if the film never confirms that the celebration is the real wedding, the beauty is doing load-bearing work without a factual anchor. That is either the source of the emotional shift or a way of borrowing feeling the story has not earned — and I can’t yet decide which.