Tsotsi

2005 Best Foreign Film (2006)

Rating: 17/20

Plot: A thug inadvertently kidnaps an infant during a car-jacking and becomes a total wuss.

It's difficult to know how to read the denouement of this movie. And yes, I'm going to spoil things if you haven't seen this already, so you probably should probably skip to the next paragraph or not read this at all. Most people on Earth have no problem not reading my blog, however. Anyway, the ending. Is it an unhappy ending because our main character--the titular gangster--is about to be arrested and spend a significant portion of his life in prison? Or is it a happy ending because despite the trouble the kid is in, his soul is in much better shape at the end of the movie than it was at the beginning? This is a bleak movie with a bleak setting and desperate and characters who you never feel are going to be OK, but there are all these rays of hope that perforate the thing. I think I would go ahead and lean toward happy ending since the incredible amount of tension built up during a kind-of stand-off in front of the baby's home is at least eased in a way that would make the other characters happy.

This is a good film, and Tsotsi is the kind of juicy complex character that I imagine would be difficult to create, both by the actor and the director. Presley Chweneyagae plays him, very nearly to perfection. A lot of the performance is about body language, and the first shot we see of him in front of a window with this menacing sky behind him while his friends are trying to add four and five with some neo-reggae/rap hybrid music popping up is a great introduction. It's difficult for me to pinpoint exactly why this baby has such an effect on this character, but Chweneyagae's performance sells it so well that it doesn't matter. There's a bit of movie trickery in humanizing this thug with scenes of an old running Tsotsi morphing into a young running and crying Tsotsi, but for the most part, it's the performance that makes this complex character work. He goes from hardened thug to baby-faced human being, often within a few frames. There's so much that goes unspoken in this movie, and you can read it all on his face as he interacts with characters or wanders around, especially when he explores the child's room. I also liked Jerry Mofokeng who played a crippled beggar, and now that I know his last name starts with "Mofo," I like him even more. The baby was also incredible. The Johannesburg slum is a setting that allows for some cool visuals, a setting that doesn't make any excuses for the characters but that definitely helps explain how circumstances lead to bad decision making. I'm still not sure which visual is more shocking--a shot of the baby with ants crawling all over him or a couple shots of homeless children living in big pipes. The afro-rap soundtrack, most of it performed by a South African artist named Zola, seems a little oppressive at times, but it adds a lot of color, and I ended up liking it. In fact, I'm listening to the soundtrack now while typing this.

Recommended by Cory.