Yesterday (2004)

Yesterday [asked about who named her]: "My father, madam. He said that things were better yesterday than they are today but that was a long time ago"

By Darrell Roodt
With Leleti Khumalo, Lihle Mvelase and Harriet Lenabe

I was going through the filmography of South African director Darrell Roodt when I came upon Yesterday. What struck me at first was the nomination for Best Foreign Language Film of the Year and then the fact that it is in Zulu. I don't think I ever saw a film in Zulu and I like to hear new languages so if I could at the same time watch a good movie and satisfy a linguistic curiosity, that's two hits with one stone.

Yesterday is a woman who lives in a small village in rural eastern South Africa. Her daughter. Beauty, doesn't go to school yet and her husband works in a mine in Johannesburg, only coming home once every couple of months. Yesterday walks two hours to go to a clinic to see a doctor because she has been coughing up but the clinic is overcrowded and they can't see everyone. Yesterday tries her luck the week after to the same result. When the new town teacher, who only feels welcomed in the village when she is with Yesterday, sees her coughing she makes sure that she doesn't miss to see the doctor the next week by paying her for a taxi. The doctor suspects something and has Yesterday's blood tested and the results are not good: Yesterday is HIV positive.

Yesterday is a slow movie. The pace is set right in the opening scene as we see Yesterday and Beauty walk in from the distance in a very long, drawn out and yet beautiful shot. I think it is hard to talk about AIDS without having to mention the state of the virus in Africa, yet it is also what we hear the least about. I think this is what makes Yesterday such a necessary movie as it puts the spectator right where a disease strikes unexpectedly. The stigma of the disease is also heightened by the small village mentality as once the whole village knows about her diagnosis the mother and daughter are quickly cast out as lepers.

 The movie is quite simple and bare but it remains overall a beautiful tale of a brave woman. Yes, it is sad and disheartening at times but it highlights the beautiful and simple things, like a child playing with rocks or eating an orange. I don't think it matters much whether it is based on a true story or not because there could be millions of Yesterdays. At times it feels a little like a television movie, at times on classic story line elements (the isolated hero in a village) but I think that above all the issues this movie can have, there is a message that is being sent and the message is good and the message has to be sent across, which I would say is a goal fulfilled.

I liked: Straightforward story of poverty, love and a virus. The movie is important.

I disliked: When it comes to directing or script writing it is not the best movie, but there's more to it.

76/100
There are so few movies about AIDS compared to the prevalence of the infection, especially in Africa, and this is what makes it such a contemporary movie.