Tsotsi
Director:
Gavin Hood
Distributed
by: Miramax Films
Released:
August 2005
Country: South Africa
"Everything
depends on upbringing."–Leo Tolstoy
It
is perhaps a legitimate point of view that blaming your parents for this or
that weakness of yours is a cop-out. So
Charlie Manson’s mom may not have hugged him enough—doesn’t seem like a good
enough excuse for him to order the slaughter of a bunch of Californians, use
their blood to write “Pigs” on the wall, and worst of all, make writer Vincent
Bugliosi famous. But sometimes, you have
to admit that a kid has a few strikes against him to start, all because of the
way he was brought up.
Such is the issue with Tsotsi, or shall we call him David? Played by Presley Chweneyagae with smoldering anger, he is a young gangster in the slums of
Johannesburg, not only given few hugs by his ma and pops, but forced to move out and set up
keep in sewer pipes because of abuse and neglect. David is dealt a bad hand in life and isn’t
as worried about morality as he is about survival.
 |
| Prawn mistreatment: District 9 |
The
only other film I ever saw that was set in Johannesburg, I think, is 2009’s District 9, also set in the slums. In that film, an alien ship hovers over the
city and the government forces all the “prawns,” i.e., the aliens, to live in
an area known as, well, District 9. A
message as subtle as a jackhammer.
 |
| "You were a little slow that time." |
No
prawns here, but the message is the same, if a bit more subtly presented—these people are stuck in their
situation. David becomes Tsotsi, which
means Little Gangster. And Tsotsi may be
little, but he is the meanest, toughest hombre in the gang he’s assembled. The other guys all listen to what he
says—like Steve and Eydie to Phil Hartman as Frank Sinatra in that SNL sketch: “Whatever you say, Tsotsi. You tell ‘em, Tsotsi. Right again, Tsotsi!” After all, if you don’t do what Tsotsi says,
you may end up buried under Giants Stadium.
Or something like that.
One
day, while Tsotsi is out to do his normal robbery and murder, he steals a
car. As he drives off, he looks in the
back seat and WHOOPS! There’s a baby
back there! What will Tsotsi do? Throw the baby out the window? Shoot the baby? Put a stamp on it and drop it in the nearest
mailbox? Tsotsi doesn’t know what to do.
 |
| All right, who left a baby in the backseat of the car I stole? |
It’s
the baby, and the young woman Miriam he soon meets to help him (Terry Pheto) that will give him a chance
to break out of his upbringing and have a chance at humanity. His gang members are confused as to why he
would want to care for a little bambino.
Has he gone soft? One friend
inquires about the pretty Miriam: “Sure, she’s a real hotsy,
Tsotsi, but what gives?” (I’m
paraphrasing. I don’t speak the
language.) The rest of the movie is
really about how far this will go.
 |
| Tsoti's hotsy-totsy |
Tsotsi
isn’t a fun movie to watch, what with all the squalor and murder and so
forth. But it is a hopeful movie. In the list of Best Foreign Films, you will
find a lot of European nihilistic ethos, a dread that comes with godlessness
and cynicism. This film does not
introduce anything like an overt Christian sentiment, and yet we find a
hopefulness that makes this film worthwhile.
The
Title: Little Gangster. It’s not often when the title character’s name
is contained in the language of his name, if that makes sense. Tsotsitaal, as far as I am able to tell,
means “language of the thug,” and is a mixed-up form of Afrikaans used in a
scattered parts of South Africa.
The
Culture: Certainly, this is a look at a
very different culture and a different way of life than anything in European or
Asian film.
Agenda
Danger: This could have turned into a
heavy-handed look at class, but instead it presents its characters and
situations as they are, light on the preachiness, unlike the Oscar winner for Best Picture that year . . .
Best
Picture that year: Crash
Rating: Tsotsi is one of those films I will never watch a
second time, but certainly worth a good one-time screening.
