A drama set in Johannesburg, South Africa, about a hardened, violent young man, Tsotsi (a non-actor, Presley Chweneyagae), a street thug ("tsotsi" in Zulu means "black hooligan") who leads a small gang that robs, assaults and on occasion kills people for sustenance and sport. After carefully establishing Tsotsi's street-mean nature, the film proceeds to show us how two chance events become transformative for Tsotsi, leading him to recall memories and images from his childhood, from before the time he ran away from home, and reawakening positive impulses and feelings, opening his heart in a way that results in acts of personal redemption, a highly compressed process that takes place over a period of just six days.
The first and more influential chance event is this: after shooting an upper middle class woman outside her posh house and stealing her car, Tsotsi discovers her infant son in the rear seat and is forced - by his own impulses - to undertake the care of the baby. He experiences a flood of recollections of his mother, dying of a disease that could be AIDS or perhaps tuberculosis, of her desire to have young Tsotsi close to her, of his violent father forbidding him to go near her, of the father kicking the family dog, breaking its back, killing it. In tears, having witnessed this act, Tsotsi runs away for good, becoming a homeless street kid.
The second event is this: Tsotsi stalks a wheelchair bound beggar to rob him and perhaps worse. But some impulse leads Tsotsi to question the man about his disability. Tsotsi learns that the man's back had been broken in an accident in the gold mine where he worked, leaving him paraplegic. Tsotsi asks the man why he wants to keep living this way, "like a dog" (like Tsotsi's own broken dog back in his childhood). "Because I like to feel the sun on my face," the man replies. Tsotsi seems stunned by this answer, contrite almost, and he puts away the pistol with which he had very likely meant to kill the beggar, and he leaves.
This opening of Tsotsi's memories and feelings prompts a profound turnabout in his behavior. He finds a young mother in the neighborhood to nurse the baby and experiences tender feelings toward her. He makes amends to a fellow gang member he had beaten severely. He seeks out the disabled beggar and gives him a horde of cash. Finally, at the end, he returns the baby to its parents (the mother he shot survived though she now has lost the use of her legs) and meekly surrenders to police, tears streaming down his cheeks.
This transformation in Tsotsi is played quite unabashedly for sentiment: we are heavily exhorted toward pathos not only by the rapid sweep of Tsotsi's redemptive actions but also by an insistent musical score composed toward the end largely of chanted lamentations. Poignant though the circumstances may be, I felt manipulated to accept Tsotsi's turnabout even as I reflected on how unrealistic, how unlikely, it would be for such a transformation to occur in a young man who was seemingly so callous, so heartless, just a few days earlier. The suspension of disbelief required here is for me more than a bit much.
But there is another way to regard this film, one that leads me to a more favorable perspective. The screenplay (written by the director, Gavin Hood) is based on a novel (of the same title) by South Africa's great playwright, Athol Fugard. His plays most often concern the experiences and plights of black Africans. Now 73, Fugard was one of the first white playwrights in Africa to work with black actors and theater staff. Well known in South Africa also for his essays and poetry, "Tsotsi" is, surprisingly, the only novel he has ever created. Written in 1959-60, it was not published until 1980. It is of interest that all of the crimes and violent acts depicted in the film (I have not read the novel to compare) are black-on-black.
The intimacy of filmed narratives is such that we tend to think only of the particular characters and circumstances at hand. Not so in the theater. On stage, we expect the story to represent larger themes and the particular characters also to be proxies for others, for whole groups or societies even. It is not unreasonable to presume that, as in his plays, Fugard intended that the story of Tsotsi to be construed allegorically. Thus he and by extension this film adaptation may really be conveying Fugard's vision that despite the incredible hardships that black South Africans have endured from whites, they have in turn brought violence and destruction upon themselves as well, and that they hold within their own hands the means of altering their collective conduct for the better.
As such, this can be seen as a larger story of hope, of encouragement toward positive aspirations and compassion, within the black community. I am keenly curious to know what South African blacks think of this film, whether they possibly respond to it in the manner suggested here. (In Zulu, Xhosa, Afrikaans and English). 2006 Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film. My Grade: B 6/10
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