Mon nom est Tsotsi

For South Africans, both resident and in exile, this film is likely to be a harrowing experience. It shows us some of the consequences of what we allowed to be done in our name.

Cinematically, the film is superb, partly because it is so understated. It is probably an insight into a way of life all to common in African metropolises. Whilst it shows the way of life in shanty towns and was, I know, filmed in authentic locations, I found myself wondering whether the coloring was just a bit rosy, but that is a very minor criticism.

The director has coaxed a performance from his lead actor which is, I think, a landmark. So much of the performance is visual - he says very little. He is supported by a bevy of other characters which those familiar with South Africa will recognize all to easily.

If you do not have a South African connection, see the movie as an insight into our way of life. See it because it is a story worth telling and therefore worth seeing.

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")

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

TSOTSI (2005) Set in South Africa, against a background of inequality and HIV, Tsotsi (played by Presley Chweneyagae), an unemotional small-time gang leader, develops an understanding of, and tries to grasp, family, belonging and caring for others. The unlikely catalyst for his redemption is a baby he finds in the back of a car he steals.

Director Gavin Hood engages our empathy and challenges our prejudices without stooping to Hollywood sentimentality. The film is filled with muted colours, swelling to golden tones as Tsotsi discovers his emotions.

The story's secondary theme is the understated but powerful role of women, typified by Terry Pheto as Miriam. She cares and nurtures, and makes beauty out of very little, including mobiles from broken glass; she quietly challenges the male-generated violence of the film.

By the end of the film the audience is moved by, and involved in, the narrative, and our awareness of the complexity of South African society is extended. This includes the soundtrack, featuring township music and a cameo role by Kwaito star Zola, the sparse dialogue in many languages, for which English subtitles are not obtrusive, and the scene-setting affluent and township locations. Tsotsi is a very convincing winner of the 2006 Oscar for Best Foreign Film.

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.