The Oscar winner for 2005's best foreign film Tsotsi is not flawless, from my perspective, even as I see how it could, and did, win the top prize. The film has intensity to it, emotion, and some solid pathos for an international audience. It also has some very good performances, and with some professional camera-work and styling. The film tells of a poor, petty thief of the title role (real name David, which he shares with only one person), played by Chweneyagae. His performance is one where he does well in acting in reacting, as it were. His eyes have that level of anger and frustration, as well as genuine ignorance, that make him an interesting choice to play the character (at times I thought 'he reminds me a little like 50 Cent, if he had some ability'). The thief steals a baby from a car after shooting the baby's mother. He keeps the baby though, and starts to grow attached to it even as it needs attention and care. He brings another mother in on it to help feed the baby, while he tries to raise money for a friend of his (err, raise in the relative sense of speaking, by stealing). This character is portrayed very simply, as almost something of a by-product of the bad that comes out of the slums of South African cities- but the bad that the filmmaker wants us to understand has more dimension than meets the eye.
This film is the kind, for me, where there are some individual scenes sprinkled in the good, decently done scenes, as well as a couple that I just didn't buy at all in the framework of the drama. My favorite, which few seem to mention, is when Tsotsi confronts a crippled homeless man in a wheelchair, following him out into a field. The cripple is afraid, befuddled, and Tsotsi doesn't think the guy is for real. Then he tells a story about a dog, and how it can break in two kicks. This scene is handled very well by how its actors work off one another and how the filmmaker doesn't get to much in the way of style. But then another scene showing a flashback to his childhood, of when he experienced this, wasn't that much affecting to me. This extra bit of exposition wasn't necessary, aside from trying to establish the boy's attachment, and detachment, to his parents, which isn't needed as his own simplicity in the situations before (without dialog no less) with the baby work fine enough. Also, the ending, as some have said, is disappointing, though even more so is before it happens, when he is just walking around with the baby all day before going to the gate for the last time. Why is this done? Certain little moments tend to get in the way of the story really working as well as the actors do. Some scenes very much carry some power and strengths, and some not as much.
That being said, I was glad I saw the film, the first Miramax film following the Weinstein split (you can tell), and I hope this film will lead to greener pastures for it's writer/director and it's lead character (a few other supporting players are excellent as well, including the 'surrogate' mother). But 'City of God' it is not.
This film is the kind, for me, where there are some individual scenes sprinkled in the good, decently done scenes, as well as a couple that I just didn't buy at all in the framework of the drama. My favorite, which few seem to mention, is when Tsotsi confronts a crippled homeless man in a wheelchair, following him out into a field. The cripple is afraid, befuddled, and Tsotsi doesn't think the guy is for real. Then he tells a story about a dog, and how it can break in two kicks. This scene is handled very well by how its actors work off one another and how the filmmaker doesn't get to much in the way of style. But then another scene showing a flashback to his childhood, of when he experienced this, wasn't that much affecting to me. This extra bit of exposition wasn't necessary, aside from trying to establish the boy's attachment, and detachment, to his parents, which isn't needed as his own simplicity in the situations before (without dialog no less) with the baby work fine enough. Also, the ending, as some have said, is disappointing, though even more so is before it happens, when he is just walking around with the baby all day before going to the gate for the last time. Why is this done? Certain little moments tend to get in the way of the story really working as well as the actors do. Some scenes very much carry some power and strengths, and some not as much.
That being said, I was glad I saw the film, the first Miramax film following the Weinstein split (you can tell), and I hope this film will lead to greener pastures for it's writer/director and it's lead character (a few other supporting players are excellent as well, including the 'surrogate' mother). But 'City of God' it is not.