I was attracted by the name of the main character, “Yesterday”, what a strange yet special name for an African, actually not only african, anyone who use this name, I find it really special. I wonder why this person name Yesterday, is she always live in yesterday? telling past stories all the time? Has she died? does she just love the song “Yesterday”? She doesn’t want to confront today? Is there any meaning to her with the name of Yesterday? Or it might just simply name by just flipping through the dictionary?
I have all these questions in my mind by just looking at the character’s name and that’s why I chose this African movie.
It began with an African song, I don’t have any idea what the song is about, but I feel comfortable by listening to it, the music is played by classical guitar or maybe some traditional african music instrument, but it sounds like guitar, clear, clean sound. A man singing in a relaxing and tight voice. Sounds to me like a dad comforting a child and a family. A lovely, caring and strong daddy.
When the movie’s goes along, I forgotten my question about her name “Yesterday”, but rather I was more interested in their clothing, it’s so nice, mix and match, all sorts of floral, colors. But I just wonder why they’re in such a poor living but still get nice clothing. It doesn’t really matter, because their fashion are strange mix and match but it’s special, some are like apron, with a t-shirt inside, a lot like pregnant shirt and almost all of them wear bandanna. And all of them match with their clothes.
I realized the overall color mood were in brown and yellowish, is that an african color mood? But it seem to me it is, all the things there, wooden house, rice paddy, sand.
The movie’s background sounds so pathetic, but everyone in the movie seems to smile all the time when they meet each other. A weird combination, that I can’t explain. Is that I don’t have the sense? or the music/sound crew for this movie doesn’t have it? Or I guess it’s a culture difference, I might get to feel, understand & appreciate if I spend sometime in african culture and movies.
Another character got my attention was a doctor in the movie, she’s a western person, I don’t know where she’s from, but she speak perfect african language, that’s really so attractive to me. It remind me when those superstar and artist speak foreign language in foreign country, a simple “How are you?”, “My name is XXX”, “I love you all”. Then they get a big round of applause by the audience, and I find it really stupid compare to this. A doctor, adapt a foreign language to communicate with the patient, speaking it perfectly. These kind of peoples definitely deserve all the applause in my point of view.
Although Yesterday’s daughter was one of the main character in the movie, but I didn’t really pay attention on her, a typical poor girl wanting to go to school and study. That's all.
And before I end this, I found my answer on why her name Yesterday? It was because she felt that, yesterday is always greater than today. It’s just that simple. I think this "journey" of looking for the answer of "Yesterday" is just so “Life”, went through the analyzing progress, this and that, and it’s actually just so simple.
Life is just as simple as we think.