TSOTSI by Gavin Hood: Film Review
November 22nd, 2005 by Andre Soares
Tsotsi (2005) 
Director: Gavin Hood. Screenplay: Gavin Hood; from the novel Tsotsi by Athol Fugard. Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Jerry Mofokeng
ONE THUG AND A BABY
Mostly spoken in Tsotsi Taal, or "gangster dialect," Tsotsi is the tale of a Johannesburg shantytown hoodlum nicknamed Tsotsi, or "Thug," who rediscovers his humanity after accidentally kidnapping an infant during a carjacking.
The premise, of course, is totally absurd. Director-writer Gavin Hood’s screenplay — based on Athol Fugard’s significantly more downbeat novel (set during the Apartheid era) — never convincingly explains why Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) would want to keep the child. True, the baby reminds the heartless thug of his long buried childhood — he had lost his mother to AIDS and had suffered at the hand of his alcoholic father — but by keeping the baby Tsotsi is putting his own life at risk when he could have either made good money by selling it (back to its parents or to someone else) or thrown it into a trash bin. Luckily, Hood’s direction generally skirts the sort of cheap sentimentality inherent to such tales.
Initially, Tsotsi’s potential cheesiness is counterbalanced by Zola’s loud rap score (that becomes grating after the first couple of seconds), and by scenes of nasty violence in the dehumanized South African metropolis.
Tsotsi himself is a violent man — at one point he goes into a beating and kicking binge that nearly kills one of his fellow thugs, and after kidnapping the baby he forces a fellow shanty dweller, a young mother named Miriam (Terry Pheto), to breastfeed his foundling. Since Miriam is a widow, she has enough room in her heart to play the role of mother to both Tsotsi and the baby.
As his tentative relationship with Miriam and the baby grows deeper, Tsotsi gradually rediscovers that there is more to life than robbing, murdering, and beating up other people.
As the film progresses from its Cidade de Deus / City of God-like beginning, the in-your-face rap music is replaced by Mark Kilian and Paul Hepker’s deeply melancholy score. From then on, Hood avoids the usual melodramatic pitfalls by adding psychological nuances to his characters — Tsotsi may have a "good" side, but he never comes across as a poor little misunderstood shantytown angel — and sociopolitical ones to his story.
Instead of dealing with the more simplistic issue of racism (see Crash and nearly every "socially conscious" American film featuring black people), Hood opts to go beyond skin color. In Tsotsi, ethnicity plays a secondary role to the more complex issues of class and social disparities. The shantytown dwellers are all black or part-black, but so are the wealthy couple whose baby is kidnapped, and the businessman who gets killed for his valuables while riding the subway.
As a plus, this beautifully shot film — courtesy of cinematographer Lance Gewer — offers a capable performance by leading man Presley Chweneyagae, a superb supporting turn by Jerry Mofokeng as an embittered crippled man.
Though hardly a great film, Tsotsi is a good — and ultimately quite moving — effort.
Reviewed at the AFI FEST 2005
Note: Originally posted on Nov. 22, 2005, the Tsotsi review was expanded on June 6, 2006.
Addendum: According to a BBC report, "in an apparent replay of the movie Tsotsi, a South Africa thief returned a baby he found in a car he had stolen.
"Police contacted the man by calling a mobile phone stolen at the same time. The thief then delivered the child to an agreed place."
So perhaps Tsotsi’s basic plotline is not that absurd, after all…
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