Customer Reviews

Tsotsi

5 star:		(45)
4 star:		(29)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

It's so great to finally see a major feature film that shows Africa from an African perspective, as opposed to through the prism of Western eyes. Another recent well-deserved Oscar winner (Best foreign language film) I just had to have in my collection; this is a violent and uncompromising look at life in a Soweto township.

Presley Cheweneyagae plays the lead, a Johannesburg small-time gangster whose nickname Tsotsi means "thug". I read somewhere that Presley was discovered playing Hamlet in a Soweto theatre group. He's a find in a million, as his performance is mesmerising.

Tsotsi finds a baby in the back of a car he's just jacked off a suburban black woman as the woman waited for the security gates outside her home to open. He doesn't do the expected and simply dump the baby at the side of the road - surprisingly, he decides to take it home and care for it. He hasn't a clue how to care for a child of course and he turns to a local woman who makes decorative mobiles from glass. She's a nursing mother herself, and - under the threat of death, mind you - Tsotsi gets her to look after the child while he goes back out there to do his thing.

It's an interesting study of how complex life is for people who don't have much and while the movie doesn't make excuses or descend into sentimentality at any point, it's engaging to gradually see the heart of the man called Tsotsi - a man who at first glance seemed utterly heartless - emerge for all to see. It's a great story, based on the novel by South African playwright Athol Fugard, and the final scenes had me (literally) on the edge of my seat the first time I watched it. Gavin Hood makes good use of Johannesburg's urban setting and the natural beauty of South Africa. I strongly recommend this movie. For anyone who might not know and who may have an interest, this is an authentic slice of African life.

TSOTSI is a jewel of a film, well deserving the Academy Award for Best Foreign Film of 2005. Though set in Johannesburg, South Africa, the story is unfortunately so universal that the film could have been made in any country in the world: the lost children of abusive parents who survive life by relying on crime fill the streets of the poor neighborhoods of all major cities. TSOTSI is a tragedy but it carries a sense of hope and redemption that makes it a powerful statement indeed.

Tsotsi - translated, means 'Thug'- (Presley Chweneyagae) is an amoral youth who heads a gang of four: Boston (Mothusi Magano), Aap (Kenneth Nkosi), and Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe). The gang steals and in general leads a life of dangerous existence, a life that abruptly alters when the gang robs and kills a gentle older man on the subway. They are on the run now and Tsotsi isolates himself further when he brutally beats Boston. He descends further into the abyss when he steals a car in the wealthy neighborhood, shooting the woman driving, and then discovering that in the back seat is an infant. His childhood flashes before his eyes and he finally shows a degree if buried decency when he takes the child with him as he abandons the stolen vehicle. Young and inexperienced in child care (his own childhood was riddled with hate and abuse), he seeks help from a young woman Miriam (Terry Pheto) who has an infant of her own (with no father) and serves as a wet nurse for the child. The manner in which Tsotsi gradually reconciles his bad life with his nascent response to recognizing kindness and salvation advances the story to its conclusion.

There is far more to the story than this short synopsis would indicate: there are levels of probing into the mind of the youthful criminal and the making of a gangster and the interaction among thieves and the changes that situations can alter that are beautifully written by Director Gavin Hood based on the Athol Fugard novel. The script is terse and much is left to the physical expressions of the characters, each acted to perfection by a stunning cast. The outsider living situation of these people is filmed with tremendous atmosphere and creativity by cinematographer Lance Gewer and the musical score by Paul Hepker and Mark Kilian serves to support the mood and action well. This is a tough movie to watch because of the reality of the issues: this is a superlative film to experience for the message it offers and for the wholly unforgettable acting of young Presley Chweneyagae and Terry Pheto. In Zulu, Xhosa, and Afrikaans with English subtitles. Highly Recommended. Grady Harp, August 06

Though "Tsotsi" is set in South Africa and the milieu, to the American eye, is as exotic as a film set on the Moon, the concerns are Universal: the loss or disconnect of ones parents, the longing for a parent's love and caring, a governments lack of concern for a citizens civil rights.
Tsotsi (Presley Chweneygae) is a hood, a young man who kills and steals without any apparent concern for what he is doing and why he is doing it. His face and eyes radiate mostly hate and disdain. He is psychically and emotionally detached and removed. Then, one day he steals a luxury car, shoots the woman to whom it belongs and realizes, once he drives the car away, that there is an infant in the back seat.
This beautiful, innocent child forces Tsotsi ( really named David) to face the loss of his Mother, the uncaring, drunken non-concern of his father and the deep seated, mostly ignored or glossed , psychically ignored feelings with which he hasn't been able to deal.
Director and screenwriter Gavin Hood (adapted from a novel by Athol Fugard) has fashioned a traditionally structured film and peopled it with non-traditional characters and it works because we can all relate to Tsotsi's dilemma. And it doesn't hurt to have Presley Chweneygae as your lead character. The first time we see Tsotsi on screen he looks at the camera with his huge black eyes: eyes that are filled with superiority, despair, disgust and hurt. When he first sees the infant his eyes and face fill with wonder and awe at the utter helplessness and innocence. It is this disparity and friction that makes the film crackle with fire and well observed life.
"Tsotsi" is not a revolutionary film like say the similarly themed "Children of God" but it is a very emotionally effective and socially aware one and Presley Chweneyagae's performance is so natural and truthful that it makes you wince with recognition and empathy.

***THIS REVIEW MAY CONTAIN SPOILERS***

Many movie reviewers view foreign language films with a smidgin of contempt. There's an underlying current of the "why do we have to put up with these things" type mentality, especially from U.S. reviewers. It's not entirely self-evident when reading these reviews, but you get that feeling deep down that American film makers, producers, marketers, and reviewers swallow these foreign film pills with a hint of displeasure. I'm sure much of that discomfort comes from the fact that some of these films drain a certain percentage of money out of their deep pockets. Personally, I say "More power to `em!"

The reason I bring this up is because TSOTSI is one of those films that could've taken off in the American mainstream had it had a significant marketing budget. It did, after all, win multiple film festival awards, snagged the American Film Institutes Audience Award and Grand Jury Prize Special Mention, as well as picking up an Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film. But because of the mentality of movie makers in the fabulously wealthy Hollywood arena, marketing of these vitally important foreign imports often gets hamstrung in favor of such film dregs as DATE MOVIE and THE 40 YEAR OLD VIRGIN. I don't say these things without any source. Go up and ask your average young adult or teenager about TSOTSI and they'll more often than not simply stare at you as if you'd just requested they give you the mathematical equation for nuclear fission.

There's something to be said for these low-budget films (although I'm not sure what TSOTSI's shooting costs were, I feel confident it didn't come close to the two dregs I mentioned above). These little-known gems give us stories that go beyond our normal film viewing range. And TSOTSI is one that I'm proud to say I watched with joy (this is a also disturbing and I'll tell you why in a moment).

Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) is a thug in South Africa. He's your typical amoral gangster who doesn't have a shred of "decency" in his young body. He also has a group of stragglers who follow him around like puppies, putting pressure on Tsotsi to come up with their evening's entertainment; they steal, they rob, they kill. But one day, when Tsotsi decides to do a job by himself, he makes a moral mistake (and I mean he makes a mistake according to his own moral code, which is to say he causes something good to come out of something terrible). He shoots a woman after stealing her car and drives away with a new BMW. But as he travels awkwardly down the road (he doesn't drive very well) he hears a cooing sound in the backseat. Startled, he turns around and discovers a baby in a carseat. Initially unsure of what to do, he takes the baby home with him and nurtures the child as best he can (which isn't very good). He soon learns that he has to watch the baby closely; ants attack the infant, and it gets hungry and poops constantly and needs to be bathed. Tsotsi forcibly procures the assistance of a widowed neighbor who recently had a child. He convinces the woman -- at gunpoint -- to breast feed the child and threatens to kill her if she tells anyone about him and the baby. A strange relationship develops between these two as the film progresses.

Torn by his own poor upbringing, Tsotsi has to decide what to do with the child when he learns that its mother is still alive. The police, too, are closing in on him and his gang of thugs have disbanded. Tsotsi's choice to care for the child has put him on a path of physical destruction, but has also led him to deeper choices, those of compassion and morality.

In the end, Tsotsi battles his internal demons in order to make the right choice for the baby, and it's a startling realization. We watch a person we absolutely loathed in the beginning of the film turn ever so slightly into a "decent" young man, and it's disturbing as a viewer (for me, at least) to empathize with someone initially devoid of humanity. But that's where TSOTSI succeeds and so many American films fail. American movies want you to see most things in black and white ("Here's the good guy and here's the bad"). But TSOTSI brings us into these lives and does so without spoonfeeding us what's right and what's wrong. The gray areas are sweeping and uncomfortable, something that packs an emotional wallop at the end of the film (I was bubbling like an idiot as tears streamed down my cheeks).

TSOTSI deserves the little notoriety it's received. In fact, it deserves much, much more.

Tsotsi is one of the intense films I have ever seen. In every moment an emotional explosion is in the making. The story concerns a young, ruthless, petty gangster in the poor settlement of Soweto on the outskirts of Johannesburg. Without giving too much away, the movie begins with a senseless and brutal murder and Tsotsi is introduced as a vicious thug without a trace of remorse. But, when he accidentally acquires a baby, a wellspring of memories of a tortured childhood open up for him.

The young man playing Tsotsi is not a professional actor, but does a superb job in the role. Another star of the show is the ghetto of Soweto with its patched- together houses, long lines at communal wells, drugs and drink -- in short a mass of seething humanity. A redemptive feature of this environment is a young mother Tsotsi meets who is decent, pleasant and will probably slowly make her way out of the worst of ghetto life. The prospect is not one of unrelieved pessimism.

White people play little role in this movie. A police inspector on the trail of Tsotsi is the only major white character. Tsotsi and his colleagues prey on their own kind, who appear for the most part to be "colored" in the racial parlance of South Africa. "Tsotsi" is beautifully made, with not a wasted moment. The atmosphere is one of steadily building tension toward an nail-biting climax.

Smallchief

Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae), a small time thug, runs with his small gang of delinquents, in a slum in South Africa. Every day, Tsotsi's three pals show up on his doorstep, looking for some direction, some meaning. One of their "jobs" takes them to a large subway station where Tsotsi spies a businessman paying a vendor with cash from his pay envelope. They follow the mark onto a train and the robbery does not go as planned. This is the first incident which will cause the small time thug to begin reevaluating his life. Later, he travels, alone, to an affluent suburb of Johannesburg and waits for someone to come home. As the rain pours down, he spots a BMW drive into a driveway. The female driver runs out of the car, into the rain, trying to get her husband to open the malfunctioning gate. Tsotsi rushes up and car jacks the vehicle, leaving the screaming woman behind. He soon discovers the reason for her frantic pleas.

"Tsotsi", written and directed by Gavin Hood, and based on a novel by Athol Fugard, is a very good film, and a worthy entry by South Africa in this year's race for Best Foreign Film at the Academy Awards.

The film is about Tsotsi, the changes he makes in his life and the reasons for these changes. He starts off as an amoral, violent thug who doesn't think twice about killing someone for a couple of dollars. He leads his ragtag group of followers, people who are even more desperate than he is, and who are willing to follow him into any situation. Clearly, this makes Tsotsi feel important and he rules them with a scornful frown, the threat of violence always near.

Even though he thinks nothing of killing someone for a few dollars, it is the murder of the businessman which is the turning point. Tsotsi begins to feel maybe there is something wrong here, with him, with his world, with everything. As this change happens, he still acts out, threatening people, harming them, even as he seeks their help or guidance. More telling, these people help him, recognizing the troubled person deep beneath the tough guy surface. At one point, he seeks the help of a single mother, who provides what he wants, but he still finds it necessary to have his gun ready, and waiting. As the story progresses, these feelings of conflict grow and grow, becoming more consuming within him, confusing him even more. Soon, he has to decide which way to go. Will he continue as a criminal or make some effort at reform?

Writer/ Director Gavin Hood manages this process well. At no point do we ever feel Tsotsi will ever be a normal human being, but there are definitely shades of progress throughout. As people offer unlikely guidance and help, he seems to soften a bit here and there, but being a tough guy is all he has ever known. It may be all he ever can be and he desperately clings to his tough guy persona. The film shows us this in a believable way. If he simply became an angel, we wouldn't believe in his transformation, or care about the outcome of his situation. The change is gradual, painful and believable.

Because the transformation is gradual, and still stained by his violent upbringing, we care about his fate. Chweneyagae leads an impressive cast of unknowns (at least in this country) who bring these characters to life. He convincingly portrays Tsotsi's menace and foreboding attitude. He doesn't speak a lot, but his facial expressions display a lot of menace; he merely stares at someone and they shrink back, afraid of the repercussions. At one point, he brutally beats a member of his gang and we suddenly have evidence of what he is capable of.

Most of this film seems drained of theatricality, giving us the impression we are watching a documentary. The one moment that rings slightly false is when Tsotsi takes his gang back to the home of the car jacking victim. They rob the house, holding her husband hostage. Two of the gang members are not quite as believable and appear too cartoonish as they threaten the poor man. This scene seems clearly influenced by American action films and doesn't mesh completely with the rest of the film.

The final scene is very memorable and very moving. You'll have to watch the film to actually find out why. I can't spoil it for you. This is one of those films that are difficult to review. If I talk too much, I'll ruin the impact and give away things that you should experience in the theater.

"Tsotsi" is a very good film, worthy of Academy Award consideration. You would be hard pressed to find a film with more believable characters and a more moving story.

The Soweto gang leader Tsotsi (literally, "thug") appears to be a hoodlum without a conscience. The film begins with his gang's murder of a subway rider, a brutal beating of his colleague who dared to raise issues of morality, and then a car-jacking. Tsotsi crashes the new car and finds a newborn baby boy in the back seat. This film won an Oscar for best foreign film, but just at this early point in the film I believe the plot becomes entirely predictable. We know that the little baby will humanize Tsotsi (he does), and that the little guy will be returned safely to his parents (he is). So, the film really hinges on Tsotsi's character development and road to redemption. I also thought the film ended somewhat ambiguously, as perhaps it should have, with Tsotsi's arrest. Director Gavin Hood clearly intends not only to tell a personal story but also to comment on the horrendous socio-economic inequalities in the post-apartheid South African townships that contributed to Tsotsi's life as a criminal. In Zulu, Xhosa and Afrikaans with English subtitles.

This is a simple and yet profound heart-warming story of redemption and transformation that takes place in a township outside Johannesburg where neat little houses built by the government are overwhelmed by square miles of shacks. There is poverty and despair here, while also providing the ever small hint of possibility for hope and opportunity. The music is absolutely beautiful.

Yes, this is a striking, well-made and thought-provoking film, but suffers from the same flaws affecting the debates around crime and criminals in the West: what about Tsotsi's victims? How about the woman who is paralyzed from Tsotsi's gunfire? or the honest, dignified businessman who is horrifically knifed for the little money in his wallet? and the aspiring teacher who is brutally beaten and disfigured by Tsotsi? The film does not dwell on their fates -- just Tsotsi's.
While viewers can be struck by the hopeful note of the possibility of this brutal criminal discovering his own humanity, redemption isn't that simple. The underlying themes are troubling: it isn't his fault -- his childhood, abusive father, victimized mother, lack of education, etc. may have helped create this monster -- but he IS a monster. One can be seduced into a feel-good experience by focusing on his emerging empathy and personal growth, but only because the film ignores his victims and the ongoing impact of Tsotsi's actions.
If you want a feel-good, hopeful movie -- it's very good. But be prepared to be unsettled if you aren't comfortable with shades of gray, and a limited examination of the issues of urban violence.

"Tsotsi", a screenplay of a novel, not a true story, but yet a film of striking realism depicting the social and economic issues of a city from South Africa. It is skillfully edited and well adapted exciting film illustrating what it was a style of survival in Johannesburg's townships during the years of the apartheid system: "Tsotsi", meaning thug or a hoodlum.
It is one of the best movies I have seen in a long time representing the horrendous of the situation in which these people lived in, in an authentic and insightful way, but still controversial on its purpose of justifying the acts of a human monster and at the same time leaving him as a hope of redemption for the rest of the country. It is hard to accept this character as a product or creation of a spiteful system and not as the monster he was by his own choice. Just because a thug had encountered his humanity and his capacity to feel compassion because of a chance he had to encounter with a baby, it means that he had paid for his crimes. Under the same circumstances and pressures, there were other protagonists like the woman who was forced to breast-feed the abducted baby. She was a mother who had to fight for her own survival and also for her baby. This woman since a different perspective was able to make her living sewing and making some decorative mobiles of glass. She should be the prophetic model to offer a hope of a better future for all the South African's citizens.