Tsotsi

I really enjoyed this movie. The setting is harsh, the opening is violent and the violence returns at times through the film. But the message is of the redemptive power of love for children and the way that reproduction, even by proxy, is a civilising force. What's really remarkable, though of a piece with Fugard's hard-nosed stage work, is that this is all done without sentimentality and without a conventional happy ending.

The acting is outstanding in particular from Presley Chweneyagae and Nambitha Mpumlwana. The music is a revelation -- I've just bought the soundtrack from iTunes and am listening to it as I write this.

The political message that I derived from the film (though it doesn't preach) concerns the extraordinary patience of the inhabitants of Soweto. It's 16 years or so since change started happening in South Africa, but so few problems seem to have been solved. One doesn't have to apportion blame for this to wonder how long it can go on without serious problems arising.

Normally, I am reluctant to slam another person's comments about a film, but I have to take issue with Noel-74. First of all, the arrogance of comments like, "You've got to be a complete idiot to believe you're seeing something new" takes me back to the self-important little twerps of my undergraduate days. So, Noel-74, if you are an undergraduate, my apologies. Let's hope it's just a stage you're working through. If you're over the of 25, please stay clear. I mean, seriously, your comment that there was something sinister in making abject poverty look so beautiful. Can any person look at the scenes depicted in that movie and feel anything other than horror at the conditions in which so many of our brothers and sisters live? Not to get all touchy-feely on you, but if you came away from that movie thinking about how beautiful it all looked, I'd say it was you, and not the movie, that could use a little more introspection. I liked this movie a lot. I thought it was moving, chilling, depressing and unpredictable. Even the ending (NO SPOILERS HERE) could have gone a bunch of different ways, several of which would have been more conventional than what we are left with. A very good film, with excellent acting.

Unforgettable

Tsotsi is gorgeous, riveting, poignant, and thrilling. Not only is it a first-rate piece of storytelling, but it also takes the viewer into a world of South African poverty and crime that he has never seen before. Director/writer Gavin Hood offers us a tale of tragic redemption and uncommon poetry in a subculture of the most abject immorality. Truly unforgettable.

The only work in recent times to which this movie can be compared is City of God. There, too, the viewer is brought into a world of poverty and crime he probably never knew existed. It is a world so bleak that it forces the viewer to examine his own morality and wonder how much of the civility he takes for granted in his life is merely the luxury of the well fed and comfortable. These characters live on the edge and their primary passion is survival.

What makes Tsotsi, in the end, a finer film than City of God is that it offers a more complex sense of hope; it reminds us in an honest and unsentimental way that inside even the hardest cases there is a soul, which is never beyond redemption

In Johannesburg, the small time criminal Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) is a teenager without feelings, hardened by his tough life. After killing a man with his gang in a robbery; hitting the gangster Boston of his gang; humiliating a crippled beggar along one night, Tsotsi hijacks a car and under the despair of a woman, he shots her in the stomach. While driving the car, Tsotsi finds that there is a baby on the back seat and the woman was a desperate mother. He brings the baby to his house in the slum and becomes attached to him. For six days, the baby changes his behavior, arousing and developing the sense of empathy and humanity in the cold blood killer.

"Tsotsi" is a touching, realistic and powerful story of redemption without being corny. Presley Chweneyagae is amazing in the role of a teenager without any feelings or respect for other human beings, with eyes without expression, and deserved a nomination to the Oscar. His behavior changes when he decides to take care of a baby that he accidentally kidnapped. I was impressed with the ghettos of poverty in Johannesburg, which are very similar to the slums in Rio de Janeiro. They are so distant and also so close, in a very sad reality of third world countries. My vote is nine.

Title (Brazil): "Infância Roubada" ("Stolen Childhood")

A Jo'burg resident myself it was great to see Jo'burg on screen in one hot film. I mean to often I get excited by seeing the Jo'burg skyline on the big screen and then I am sadly disappointed by the following weak film, not in this case. A great film with a great cast and great direction. Yes there are similarities to "City of God" but the story is much smaller and hence more personal; maybe it's because I live in Johannesburg but I found myself so emotionally caught up in the film that more then once I had to hold back tears.

Maybe there were some obvious uses of cinematic dramatic vices, yet the film held together all the way to the end and packed a serious punch. The lead actor was brilliant in his role which teetered between the victim and the aggressor constantly and consequently good and evil. A great cameo performance by Presley Chweneyagae. As a near graduate of South African film school this gives me hope for the cinematic future of our country.