Tsotsi is the Oscar winner for Best Foreign Film in 2005, The film is set in a slum of Johannesburg, South Africa, and the focus is on a small group of petty criminals, of which Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) is the unofficial leader. He is a killer, and a mystery even to his closest friends. Even his name is unknown to them. Tsotsi simply means Thug . But after a brutal night of crime, one of his friends challenges him, saying something which sets Tsotsi into a rage. Brutally beating up his friend, Tsotsi flees to an extremely wealthy neighborhood, where he spontaneously steals a rich woman's car, shooting her and driving off into the darkness. The full story which is to be told becomes clear when Tsotsi realizes there is an infant boy in the back seat. This infant boy will forever change this hardened killer.
As with many great films, there are different ideas one can pull out of it. A major spiritual theme that will be addressed in this review is the cycle of parenting. Tsotsi himself becomes a vague sort of parent as he attempts to care for this child that he has kidnapped. During the film we see a healthy set of parents grieving and searching for their missing baby, a loving mother looking after her own infant even as Tsotsi forces her to feed his pilfered child, and we see the parents that Tsotsi fled from as a young boy, his mother dying of AIDS and his father an abusive drunk.
Again, there is so much more to this film than just its intense story, which leaves the viewer gasping and praying for the safety of this poor innocent baby, as well as for the safety of this loveless killer that we’ve somehow become endeared to. One reason the viewer comes to sympathize with Tsotsi’s plight is that he was neglected and run out of his own home. He lost his loving mother and was traumatized by his father. Without the nurturing of a parent, we see how this young man (whose age is left purposefully vague, but whose gun makes him as old as he needs to be), could become the cold-blooded killer that he is. And we also see how important the profound love of parent for child can be when the assaulted couple pushes the police to find their son.
We see this idea of the importance of nurture played out in Tsotsi. When our protagonist is placed into a position he cannot run away from, when he is supposed to become a parent but never had any quality parents himself, Tsotsi is forced to try to rebuild and repair the cycle of parenting that he had broken free of in his own life. And this is the seed of change for him. No longer can he kill without feeling, because he has felt what it is to be needed by someone, and to be responsible for anothers survival. When Tsotsi must become a father, all of the hurt he had stifled resurfaces and he begins the process of healing needed to confront the demons that his own drunk and violent father had sewn in him.
In Tsotsi world, anything can happen. No one is safe from the violence that is going on all around them. Director Gavin Hood paints a real world picture in this sense, and that element is what keeps one on the edge of their seat. Just like in reality, the good guy may not always win, and the helpless child may not be protected. These are the rough and tumble streets that Tsotsi raised himself on. He did not have a father who brought him up in the knowledge of right and wrong. In that sense he is much like our own American culture today which has (in many instances) rejected God and lost the understanding of what is right and what is wrong. Without the caring and nurture of parents, whether heavenly or earthly, we simply will fall short. When Tsotsi himself is placed in the role of a parent. His awakening is both thrilling and heartbreaking to watch.
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