Winner of the 2006 Oscar for best foreign language film, this crime drama looks at the results of the orphan crisis in Africa. Violence and AIDS often leave young children on the streets to fend for their own. It’s a brutal life and many are forced into violent crime.
Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), which means thug, is one of those children. Along with his fellow gang members Aap (Kenneth Nkosi), Boston (Mothusi Magano, HOTEL RWANDA) and Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe), Tsotsi spends his days stalking potential marks. One job turns deadly. Boston, who had previously been training to be a teacher, doesn’t have the stomach for violence. He challenges Tsotsi on whether the emotionless thug understands decency at all. This leads Tsotsi to nearly beat Boston to death.
Tsotsi then goes out in the rain to do a job on his own. He watches as Pumla Dube (Nambitha Mpumlwana, BEYOND BORDERS) tries to open the gate at her lavish home. Tsotsi pulls a gun on her and while stealing her car, he shoots her. Unbeknownst to him, Pumla’s infant son is in the back seat of the car.
Tsotsi at least has enough the decency not to abandon the baby taking him home with him. But the gangster is ill equipped to care for a baby, keeping the child in a paper bag under the bed. Tsotsi quickly learns the difficulty of caring for a child, compelling him to force at gunpoint a new mother named Miriam (Terry Pheto) to breastfeed the stolen baby.
As Tsotsi, whose real name we find out is David, grows more attached to the baby, we learn more about his own feelings of worthlessness and abandonment. Tsotsi wasn’t born violent, he was made that way. Through the course of the film, he finds the decency within himself. The ending is kind of inevitable, but director/writer Gavin Hood, who based the film on a novel by Athol Fugard, finds a healing conclusion that is nicely bittersweet.
Leads, Chweneyagae and Pheto, make their big screen debuts with a great deal of sincerity and truth. Chweneyagae has a childlike look, which adds a bit of haunting irony to his violent behavior. Though the film has a sobering subject matter, it knows when to infuse humor and hope into the story. Lance Gewer’s cinematography has a hazed look and Earthy tone that really sucks us into the feel of living in Johannesburg slums. This positive look at the inherent goodness in all human beings finds the right notes to tell its dramatic tale without sentimentality or watering down the truth. At times the film is brutal, but it is ultimately a message of redemption. This is a great film worthy of the praise it has received.
Rick DeMott
Animation World Network
Creator of Rick's Flicks Picks
