Yesterday...

...I saw a movie entitled "Yesterday," which, I will have you know, is the first film in Zulu to be internationally released. If I tell you that it's about a woman in rural South Africa, can you tell me the rest of the plot? That's right, she has a child, she finds out she has HIV, she's monogomous, her husband works in the mines in South Africa and only comes home every few months, and he has it too. Because in a country with some regions whose infection rate exceeds 50%, what other story is there to tell? And what else would such a region feel compelled to share with the world about itself?

The movie won some international film fesitval awards (Venice, I think) and is perhaps most amazing for its utter simplicity. There are really no surprising plot twists or big heroic deeds- just a woman living her life and dying. The simplicity of the characters and their stereotypocity (yeah, it's a word now) bring to mind Alexander Smith McCall's "The Number One Ladies' Detective Agency" series; I remember reading those books and thinking, is this level of innocence and simple goodness allowed in a mainstream adult novel in 2005? It was blissful. So I guess Yesterday is the melancholy underside of the same coin. Our main character, Yesterday (which they say in English for some reason?), is cheerful and simple and good-hearted and brave, but the film is saved from an overdose of bambi-ism by reminding us, in the end, there is really nothing cool about being poor and sick in Africa. And dying of AIDS is not necessarily an inspiring event. Whether you're cheerful and brave or nasty and cowardly or some kind of throroughly human mix, in the end, you're just dead.

So, kudos to the filmakers for realizing that the Romanticism of African landscapes and novelty of African music and dramatization of "the universal bonds between mother and child" might reach an international audience perhaps already sated with the message of what AIDS is doing to Africa. They were right. (Did I mention the music? African music? The song during the ending credits made a tiny little stone table crack in my heart (I hope that's not sacriligious; I don't mean it to be). I immediately went online afterwards to look for a soundtrack, preferably being sold with profits going to an upstanding organization working to fight the disease, but alas, no luck. :-( )

I think Alan Paton would be proud of this film.

So now I just want to go to South Africa, and, you know, save ALL the people. 'Cause I'm simplistic like that.

Go well,
Neb