Tsotsi

Authentic from start to finish
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...

The Gradual Ascension to Manhood and Decency
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...

Wounded
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...

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