Tsotsi (2005)
Directed by Gavin Hood

Film Review

After an auspicious start with his first two features, A Reasonable Man (1999) and In Desert and Wilderness (2001), South African filmmaker Gavin Hood achieved international acclaim with Tsotsi, an inspired re-interpretation of a 1961 novel by the prominent South African playwright Athol Fugard.  Lauded by the critics, this brutal yet intensely moving portrayal of redemption in the slums of post-Apartheid South Africa won Hood the Academy Award for Best Foreign Language Film in 2006 and allowed him to gravitate to more mainstream fare such as the intense political thriller Rendition (2007) and his sci-fi action extravaganza X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009).  Despite his subsequent successes, Tsotsi remains Hood's most interesting and involving film to date, its strikingly moody visuals lending it a haunting savage lyricism which makes up for the slight lack of sophistication in the plot and characterisation.  This is more a piece of reflective poetry on the complexity of human nature than a conventional social drama.

The word 'tsotsitaal' from which the title derives translates as 'thug' and the menacingly laconic screen persona of lead actor Presley Chweneyagae fits this epithet to a tee.  Frighteningly magnetic in his first screen role, Chweneyagae has a powerfully threatening presence throughout the film and his impulsively violent character appears far more a mercurial force of nature than a mere human being.  Tsotsi is a man of few words and reveals his inner thoughts and feelings only in homeopathic amounts, through his slight gestures and facial expressions.  At first he strikes you as the familiar Quentin Tarantino-type heavy, a conscienceless brute whose homicidal instincts trump any other thought that enters his head.  But gradually, imperceptibly, his true nature slowly comes to the surface and we see a quite different character - a frightened, solitary man-child driven to violent excess merely to survive in a dog-eat-dog world that has given him nothing but pain, rejection and endless cause for resentment.

The turning point - the moment when we begin to sympathise with the hard-as-nails protagonist - comes when Tsotsi encounters a blind paraplegic older man for the second time.  On their previous meeting, the young good-for-nothing terrorised the helpless cripple, reducing him to a quivering wreck through an onslaught of bullying contempt.  When they meet for a second time, they somehow make a connection and Tsotsi is dissuaded from another violent assault by something deep within him - the first stirrings of compassion for a fellow creature in torment.  Without this crucial scene the tale of redemption that follows would be hard, if not impossible, to swallow after the catalogue of murderous atrocities that had preceded it.  Tsotsi's concern for the well-being of the baby he accidentally acquired in the course of a brutal car-jacking now becomes far more plausible, and when we realise the extent to which the boy suffered in childhood, habitually abused and humiliated by his tyrannical father, it become apparent that Tsotsi's true nature is far more complex and open-ended than we might have supposed.

It would be stretching matters too far to suggest that Gavin Hood has the same insights and motivations as his esteemed forebear Robert Bresson, but there is a distinctly Bressonian feel to the film in its second half, both in the deliberate stylisation - a subtle shifting from hard-edged realism towards a gentler dreamlike theatricality - and also in the representation of the protagonist as a martyr through his conscious decision to follow his better instincts and 'do the right thing'.  By opting for the more palatable 'safe' ending (thankfully we are spared the expected Tarantinoeqsue bloodbath), Hood doesn't quite deliver the pummelling impact the film deserves.  You are left wondering what future Tsotsi can possibly have - more brutalising ill-treatment, more soul-destroying social isolation, a sure recipe for hardening his sense of alienation and sociopathic impulses.

Tsotsi's moment of spiritual triumph - a spontaneous act of mercy imperilling his own life - will probably count for nothing and could even make him an even greater villain in the long run.  If the film's ending appears somewhat unsatisfying, this is probably because its author saw no point in trotting out the glib happy ending for so mixed-up and marginalised an outsider as Tsotsi.  The point of the film isn't that people can suddenly change from hardened criminals to model citizens; rather, it is that change is both miraculous and possible, and no one should be written off as an undesirable, no matter how bad they may appear.

Film Synopsis

Barely into adulthood, Tsotsi is a hardened criminal who lives in a shanty district of post-Apartheid South Africa. He scrapes a living by brutal thievery with his mates Butcher, Boston and App.  Prone to fits of impulsive aggression, Tsotsi seemingly has no conscience and is capable of turning on his own criminal accomplices when the mood takes him.  One night, he hijacks a car, leavings its female owner, Mrs Pumla Dube, for dead, and drives off, only to discover a recently born baby on the back seat.  Unsure what to do with the helpless infant, Tsotsi takes it back to his ramshackle abode and does his best to care for it.  Meanwhile, Pumla is sufficiently recovered from the assault to help the police begin their hunt for her attacker in the hope of recovering her stolen child.  Not up to the job of child-rearing, Tsotsi turns to Miriam, a young woman in his neighbourhood, and she reluctantly agrees to take the ailing baby boy off his hands.

Rejoining his criminal friends Butcher and App, the young hoodlum decides to raise some money so that the badly wounded Boston can sit an exam that will allow him a way out of his life of crime.  To that end, the trio break into the affluent Dubes' homestead and, after tying up the house-owner John, they begin helping themselves to anything of value.  The crooks make a hasty retreat when John sets off the burglar alarm, although Tsotsi shoots Butcher dead in the confusion.  Abandoned by App, Tsotsi returns to Miriam's shack and gives in to her pleas to return the kidnapped baby to its parents.  That same evening, Tsotsi heads back to the Dubes' house but just as he is about to hand over the child to its frantic mother armed police show up in force...