History has long been written by the victors, and so are celebratory documentaries. The Story of Yes (RTÉ2, Monday) shown to mark the first anniversary of the Marriage Referendum, is a joyous, personal, uplifting, always emotional piece of work.
A key part of the success of the Yes strategy was the way in which the campaign brought personal stories to the fore, with LGBT people coming forward to tell their stories, about coming out, about living in a society that treated them differently, about how much a yes votes means to them. Hugh Rodgers’ film follows that model, stressing the extraordinary change in society but, through interviews, the happy ordinariness of the lives impacted by that vote.
In their kitchen in Drogheda, Anthony Kinahan and Barry Gardiner, a couple for years, talk about campaigning, and their fears that the vote wouldn’t go their way. Joey Kavanagh explains how his Get the Boat 2 Vote campaign to bring Irish people home from the UK to vote took off. Aoife O’Driscoll and Anna MacCarthy Adams were trying to get pregnant through IVF just when the marriage debate kicked off, and posters from the no side claiming that babies need a father appeared on many lampposts. They’re filmed at home now putting together the cot, folding baby clothes, talking about how relieved they are by the vote for equality. And that’s the tone that comes off these and all the interviewees whose lives have been impacted by the outcome of the vote: a sense of relief, without a hint of triumphalism about the Yes result.
A Reeling in the Years element comes in when archive clips are shown of some of the many tense TV debates in the run-up to election day, the mobilisation of campaigners by the yes side in the weeks and months before, vox pops from the time, ecstatic scenes from count centres and Dublin Castle. The sharp editing gives the film a joyous momentum.
Watching the snippets of TV debates is the only time the No side is heard – reasonably, I suppose, because this is the Story of Yes – but during the debates they articulated fears, scary scenarios and dire predictions about a post-referendum society if the Yes side won. So what do they think now? The Yes win was decisive but the film doesn't do more than brush by the fact that two out of every five voters voted No – three quarters of a million is a lot of people. One year on it would be interesting to hear what they think now.
