Tsotsi

-1. Overview
-2. Cast and Crew
-3. Photo Pages
-4. Trailers, Clips, DVDs, Books, Soundtrack
-5. Posters (Current Films)
-6. Production Notes (pdf)
-7. Spiritual Connections
-8. Presentation Downloads

A young man who has grown up on the streets of the townships outside of Johannesburg is known only as Tsotsi -- the term for a street thug or gangster. He is the leader of a small pack of petty (and becoming not so petty) criminals -- Boston (a failed teacher), Butcher (aptly name assassin) and Aap (Tsotsi's oldest friend). These are people who have no hope for a better world. They have learned to survive by violence. They care for no one -- maybe not even each other.

One night, Boston badgers Tsotsi for some personal information -- his real name or if he's ever had anyone who has meant something to him, even a dog. Tsotsi's anger leads him to beat Boston to a pulp. He then goes off to a good neighborhood in Johannesburg and sits in the rain. Soon a resident drives home, but when she has trouble getting the security gate open, Tsotsi takes advantage of the opportunity and carjacks her car. Not far down the road, he hears her baby begin to cry in the backseat. After crashing the car, Tsotsi takes the child back to his shack in the township and is on his way to a new life.

Untrained actor Presley Chweneyagae gives a chilling performance as this young man filled with bitterness and violence who through the gift of a child, even for a short time, comes to understand that life is about more than self. Life is completed by having someone to care for.

Tsotsi and his crew live an almost feral existence. We only see them come into town to commit crimes -- and they are vicious crimes. They quickly find the weak and prey upon them. They care nothing about life or death, only the satisfaction of releasing their rage on their victims.

When Tsotsi chooses to bring the baby back to his shack, he takes upon himself the responsibility for another person. He is not equipped for all that is involved. He tries to feed the child canned milk, with minimal success. Soon he finds Miriam, a young widowed mother with a child of her own, and forces her at gunpoint to feed the child. In time he learns that caring for the child is beyond him, but how can he take it back? And what will life be like for him after having given himself, however inadequately, to another.

It is in his sharing his life, first with the child, then a bit with Miriam, and a bit more as he cares for Boston in his recovery after Tsotsi has beaten him so severely, that provides the beginning of redemption in his life.

Through brief and chaotic flashbacks we see a bit of what pushed Tsotsi to this life of anger and violence. We see his dying mother and cruel father. We see Tsotsi and Aap living in the pipes that make up the township's orphanage. (Tsotsi later comes back to those pipes and sees the next generation that is headed toward his life.)

In a key scene, Tsotsi goes into the city where he encounters a beggar in a wheelchair. Following him out of the train station, he eventually asks him, "Why do you live like a dog?" referring to the way he begs and survives on other people scraps. But we see that it is Tsotsi who lives like a dog – a pack animal who grabs what he can without regard or morals.

The film is a study in contrasts. We see the skyscrapers of Johannesburg and the clean city streets where the child's parents live, then we see the expanse of the township that seems to go on forever. We see the bare pipes that serve as shelter for the children without families, then we see the child's bedroom in his middle class parents' home filled with toys and beautiful things. Even within the township, we can see contrasts. Amid all the poverty, Miriam's home has things of beauty. She has made mobiles. One is made of rusted metal ("I was sad"). Another is of brightly colored glass ("I was happy").

The contrasts are not just matters of rich and poor. There are the loved (Miriam's child) and the unloved (the children in the pipes). There are those who survive and those who live. Tsotsi is on the cusp of moving from surviving to living. It is not an easy shift to make, and Tsotsi is only beginning to make the shift. But we have hope that the first steps he has taken will in time lead to life.

The film is based on a novel by one of South Africa's finest playwrights, Athol Fugard, and brought to the screen by writer and director Gavin Hood. I've had the privilege of seeing several of Fugard’s plays and also seeing Hood's earlier film, A Reasonable Man, at a film festival a few years ago. Hood is a talented filmmaker who has been touted as someone to watch. He has updated Fugard's novel in such a way to bring new life to this powerful story. Part of that updating is drastically changing the ending. But the ending that Hood ends up with in the film is one that is satisfying for the viewer as well, I think, as true to the spirit of Fugard’s story, even if it doesn't follow that ending.

Tsotsi is a powerful depiction of the power of sharing our lives with others. It is a film of hope in that, by the end, we see where Tsotsi's life can go, even if it is still a long and difficult journey. But he has learned that there is more to life than himself and the moment. The child he finds in the back of a car offers him a future he may have never contemplated. Futures are always a sign of hope.

- Overview