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Tsotsi
:. Director: Gavin Hood
:. Starring: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Israel Makoe
:. Script: Athol Fugard, Gavin Hood
:. Running Time: 1:36
:. Year: 2006
:. Original Title: Tsotsi
:. Country: South Africa
:. Official Site: Tsotsi
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Set in a shantytown in the suburbs of Johannesburg, Tsotsi follows a young gangster on a short journey to humanization. When the film opens, we discover Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) and his posse as they stab a man to rob his wallet—a brutal premise aiming at establishing this group of teenagers as a pack of animals stripped of any moral and emotional sense. They are predators who steal and kill to survive according to the basic laws of nature, and even though their attitude is shocking, writer/director Gavin Hood—who's working from a novel by renowned playwright Athol Fugard—doesn't offer a judgmental look at the protagonists, rather presenting them through an anthropological angle showing that their behavior is the result of the environment they grew up in.
However, a couple of incidents will take Tsotsi off the beaten—thug—path: the discovery of a baby in a stolen car as well as an encounter with a homeless man suddenly awakes some new feelings in him and, within a short period of six days, he will transform from animal into human being.
Bathed in gorgeous cinematography and featuring outbursts of violence, Tsotsi reveals its beauty in its roughness. Hood successfully entices spectators into this contrasted portrait of an individual and, through a metaphor, of the world he embodies—the name "Tsotsi" means street/gang thug in South Africa.
While it's hard not to fall for this film—and I certainly fell for it while watching it—, most particularly because of Chweneyagae's vibrant performance, Tsotsi is a fairly formulaic picture, which is based on the association of "winning" screenwriting elements such as street violence and redemption, set in an exotic background. Despite its stature as a foreign film, which brings additional credibility, Tsotsi is at heart a mainstream—and arguably commercial—film, which transposes the Martin Scorcese formula from Brooklyn to South Africa while surfing on the success of City of God, using the slums to position itself somewhere between social commentary and exoticism. What made City of God a much better film than Tsotsi was its documentary-like and uncompromising approach, while, with its feel-good sensitivity and aesthetic direction, Tsotsi is clearly aimed at seducing festivals—spectators and juries alike—and by looking at the number of audience awards it gleaned, from Toronto to Edinburgh and here at AFI, it certainly succeeds at that level.
Fred Thom
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Tsotsi review
