Movie Review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Movie Review - Essay Example It is Beauty in whom Yesterday’s hopes rest in seeing the girl break the vicious cycle of poverty and oppression through the opportunities of education. What Khumalo’s character does not realize early on in the film, and that which is the central theme of the film, is that the opportunities gained through education mean much more than a better income. As Yesterday will learn, it means, too, an informed mind, the means by which to confront old customs and traditions that have brought about a healthcare crisis in African and other third world countries by the rampant spread and devastation of AIDS. Khumalo’s character learns that her life will be cut short by the killer disease passed on to her by her husband. It is often the old traditions that continue to enslave people, especially women, on the social front long after freedoms are won on the political front. In the film Yesterday, we see plight of women whose lives are like the road upon which we see Yesterday walk down as she makes the two hour trip to the clinic to receive healthcare. It is a barren stretch of desert where the desolation of the landscape is a reflection of the lives of women enslaved by poverty and old traditions where men still prove their prowess by sexual conquest and performance. Yet there is beauty even in the barren South African landscape. This is contrasted by the beauty of the actresses, Khumalo and Mvelase as they walk together down that same road. The skillful close ups that capture the natural beauty of the two actresses is successful in casting the beauty of life onto the desolation of the landscape. Desolation in the desert, as in poverty, gives way to the beauty of life. However, we know, as seen in the community scenes where the harshness of life is deeply etched in the faces of the women scrubbing their clothes on scrub boards that â€Å"Beauty† without the opportunity of education to rise