Tsotsi


Synopsis
Teenage gangster thug, Tsotsi, living in the slums of South Africa carjacks a woman without realizing there was a baby in the backseat. Personal revelations and redemption ensue. Winner of Best Foreign Language film at last year’s Academy Awards. (R, 2006)


Observations
I have always had problems believing films that center around traditional ideas of redemption and Tsotsi is no different. Here’s a kid forced into shooting, stabbing and stealing his way through his young life. The he finds a baby. I wondered if there were perhaps some subtle notes of the biblical manger story in this film – a man with a child, nowhere to stay safely, no one wants to help. That makes Tsotsi the gangster a foil for the Virgin Mary and the abducted child Christ.

But ultimately I just couldn’t buy the idea that this kid would even try to keep this baby. He could have left the child anywhere, killed it, sold it, who knows? But the scenes of Tsotsi with the baby in a shopping bag seemed silly. Why would this gangster cart around a baby? It just doesn’t make sense.

The cinematography and soundtrack were excellent. This is not a film for the faint of heart as there are heaping amounts of senseless violence. Perhaps this was the best that the world had to offer last year in foreign films. One of my favorite, atypical redemption stories is American Movie. It’s a documentary about a normal guy trying to make something spectacular happen against the odds. Try it, you might like it.

Rating:
Amazon's entry for Tsotsi