Capping off the quartet of Africa message movies (starting with Blood Diamond, then the Last King of Scotland, then Hotel Rwanda), and overlapping a couplet of Oscar nominated (and/or winning) foreign films, the weekly red envelope brought me the Oscar-winning foreign language film from 2006, Tsotsi. It was the Oscar gold that put this movie on my radar, so without further adieu, allow me to discuss a la the Reel Thoughts tradition.
Tsotsi is apparently a term for "thug" or "gangster," and, in this case, it's the nickname for a young man (Presley Chweneyagae) who leads a hard and violent life on the Johannesburg, South Africa, streets. This young man is so cold, so rough around the edges, that he and his small gang commit random and nightly acts of burglary and violence with nary a second thought - that is, until, the obviously pent up anger within Tsotsi leads him to pummel one of his gang members and, later, to shoot a young woman in an unthinking fit of fear and anger as he hijacks her car. What he doesn't realize is that her infant son is in the backseat; thus, Tsotsi is struck with a crisis of conscience, as he finds that he cannot ignore the poor baby. He, therefore, fumbles his way through his own poverty and quest for survival in an attempt to care for the baby, even going so far as to hearken upon a neighboring woman's door and having her nurse the baby from starvation. As his focus turns to the child, his focus turns away from his gangster life and his troubled past and toward the road to redemption and the melting of his hardened heart.
I enjoyed Tsotsi. It was an engaging movie with a fairly simplistic but inspiring story based on a novel. The movie had a few elements going for it that lent to this engaging quality. First, the cinematography was really interesting - there were some fantastic color hues and uses of light and shadow to accentuate Tsotsi's external and internal struggles. From a stale, sunlit sky to a dusty dusk in outside scenes to oppressive dark shacks, shadowy under-passes, and the bright and comforting neighboring woman's home, the contrasts were stark, drawing the viewer in visually quite effectively. Add to that a moving score that perfectly highlighted Tsotsi's struggle, featuring a soloist with a truly haunting voice, and the basic sights and sounds of the film served well to immerse the viewer in this touching character study.
Still, I don't think the film would have been as interesting if it weren't for the charismatic young man who played the film's lead. Mr. Chweneyagae had such a quality about him - he has such a young, even slightly effeminate look, but his voice is so deep, and his expressions were so acute and intense, my disbelief was completely suspended. I've never heard of the actor (if he enjoys fame in South Africa, I wouldn't know), but he has a great talent and potentially great future in acting if he hasn't already had a great career. Maybe I should look him up on the imdb.
Yet, Tsotsi had some major storytelling flaws which prevent me from truly loving the film. I don't know if the story suffered in adaptation to film or in the idea to keep the running time a trim 94 minutes or in the novel itself, but there were some gaping holes. The Spout page's plot synopsis above talks about how Tsotsi's mother died from AIDS-related illness, and that his father was tortuously abusive. Maybe those details were in the original novel, but they were only subtlely implied in the film. I knew that Tsotsi's mom was sick, and that his dad was a drunk who hurt the family dog - and I suppose, one could draw further conclusions, but other than a few other short glimpses of Tsotsi's childhood homelessness, no other flashbacks into his childhood were offered. As such, it was hard to grasp why Tsotsi was so deeply affected by the infant in his care; one could, again, make many assumptions, anywhere from an abandonment complex by his parents to a need to nurture something other than his tendency toward violence to the more straightforward assumption of him just being at the point where the desire for redemption overshadowed any other desires, but these are all guesses and interpretations interpolated from the scant information offered. Nothing is certain the way the story is presented.
In any event, though Tsotsi's past was not given full flush, some of his motivations could, at least, be derived, and Mr. Chweneyagae's performance kept me interested throughout. I was also moved by the actress who played the neighbor and seemed to pity Tsotsi as much as she feared him (since he initially forced her to nurse at gunpoint and at the expense of her own baby).
All in all, like I indicated, I liked the movie, and it was refreshing that the film did not focus on the plight of Africans but on a story of humanity that had universal implications and relatability. On the patented ratings scale, I see this in the realm of a 7.5, between shaky and minor flaws/very good, because it's a little better than shaky but contains these striking story-related flaws that are more major than minor. In the world of the test, it's not so much a pass. I enjoyed the film, but it's not one that would incite repeat viewing from me. I would, at least, recommend the film because even the angriest, stingiest, scroogiest, grinchiest viewer would probably feel their heart melt right along the melting heart of Tsotsi himself, so in that vein, I readily say: give these heartwarming subtitles a chance.