Tsotsi

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(c) AJMalouin 2006
(Ratings: 1 by Al and 5 by Caryl)
(2005/UK/South Africa. Directed by Gavin Hood.) (1 hr 34. Dialogue is in Afrikaans, Xhosa and Zulu, with a little English and complete subtitles. Rated R for language and some strong violent content.)

The best films may well be those exposing a personal journey, that is, films in which we are clearly shown where a person starts out, and then clearly shown the process by which he or she becomes a different person at the end of the film.

Judged by those criteria, “Tsotsi” is superb.

In “Tsotsi” our nameless protagonist starts out as tsotsi (literally, “a thug”) and by film’s end has achieved redemption. Presley Chweneyagae does a great acting job in the lead role. We can actually see on his face the instant at which he starts to change. (Or was it only Al’s imagination, driven by the story?) His face softens. The hardness is gone and we no longer recognize him as Tsotsi, the thug.

That, however, is down the road a bit.

Throughout the film, the city of Swaboto sits Oz-like on the horizon. It is just out of reach, across a deep gully from the shanty town. Tsotsi sometimes sits on a hill, looking at Swaboto gleaming in the distance. The only time we are actually in the city is during the brief, horrifying subway scene in which a rich fat muggee is kilt with an ice pick.

As the film opens, our Tsotsi has assembled the latest of a long series of gangs in the shantytown on the outskirts of Swaboto. THIS gang is his most violent ever, and features a murderer who’s quite adept with an ice pick. The graphic demonstration of his ice-pick skills during a subway mugging left Al feeling queasy for days afterward. The mug-murdering takes Tsotsi’s gang to a level (depth, actually) at which they have never been. When one of the gang questions that act in the bar afterwards, Tsotsi beats him to a bloody pulp. He then runs out of the bar on his own into the depths of the darkness, to undertake the next job opportunity on his own.

The next job presents itself immediately: a car-jacking in which he shoots a woman and lurches off in her BMW. On the verge of later dumping the car, he suddenly hears the whimpering of a baby (NOT wrapping in swaddling clothes) on the back seat. He walks five steps from the car, stops, turns back to the baby…and takes it with him. Thus begins his redemption.

His very next robbery is quite different in nature. He follows the mother of a new-born baby to her home in shanty town. At gunpoint he forces the mother to breast-feed the baby he has kidnapped. He holds the gun on her but it is a half-hearted attempt at threatening. She *wants* to care for the kidnapped baby, even offers to keep the baby. Awakening briefly from his dreams of his own childhood and mother, the thug snarls, “No! It’s my baby!”

In the end, of course, and as is necessary for his redemption, Tsotsi, whose real name we soon find out is “David,” finally decides to return the baby to its parents. When this final act in his redemption takes place, however, the police arrive before he chooses to leave the baby for good and make good his escape.

Having seen Tsotsi literally change from a totally heartless thug into a creature of child-like innocence, we believe that the journey will be for nothing in the end. For several tense moments, it appears as though one or another of the many policemen is going to shoot David dead in the street. David meekly raises his hands in the air, however, and gives himself over to a higher power. Fade out, as his redemption is complete.