Tsotsi (2005)
Country: SA/GB
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto, Kenneth Nkosi, Mothusi Magano
Synopsis:
A young hoodlum in a South African township hijacks a suburban blackwoman's car, only to find a baby on the back seat. Something from his past makes him take it home and there begins a complex process of neglect, attachment and remorse.
Review:
Vigorous, assured, and a beacon for the fledgling native film industry, this hardhitting drama boasts a stunning performance from the lead, Chweneyagae, and a cameo from one Zola, a local Kwaito musician whose records provide some of the soundtrack's percussive hip-hop beat. It is inevitably sanitised when it comes to the nitty-gritty of the babe's predicament (even Three Men and a Baby had more nappy changes), but the violence and desperate conditions in the slums are not glossed over. The essence of the piece is that the kid has a rebirth, a second chance, and as such the story should be a focus of hope for the dispossessed: decency, a concept oft repeated in the screenplay, is the quality Tsotsi must cling to if he is to feel and inspire love, and the scenario of choice is nicely adumbrated by the symbolic mise en scène: dark and dingy for his shack, clean and dappled with light in the case of Miriam's, his coerced wet-nurse, while the baby's home is all security gates, consumer comfort, style and bottles of wine.
Country: SA/GB
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto, Kenneth Nkosi, Mothusi Magano
Synopsis:
A young hoodlum in a South African township hijacks a suburban blackwoman's car, only to find a baby on the back seat. Something from his past makes him take it home and there begins a complex process of neglect, attachment and remorse.
Review:
Vigorous, assured, and a beacon for the fledgling native film industry, this hardhitting drama boasts a stunning performance from the lead, Chweneyagae, and a cameo from one Zola, a local Kwaito musician whose records provide some of the soundtrack's percussive hip-hop beat. It is inevitably sanitised when it comes to the nitty-gritty of the babe's predicament (even Three Men and a Baby had more nappy changes), but the violence and desperate conditions in the slums are not glossed over. The essence of the piece is that the kid has a rebirth, a second chance, and as such the story should be a focus of hope for the dispossessed: decency, a concept oft repeated in the screenplay, is the quality Tsotsi must cling to if he is to feel and inspire love, and the scenario of choice is nicely adumbrated by the symbolic mise en scène: dark and dingy for his shack, clean and dappled with light in the case of Miriam's, his coerced wet-nurse, while the baby's home is all security gates, consumer comfort, style and bottles of wine.
Country: SA/GB
Technical: col/scope 94m
Director: Gavin Hood
Cast: Presley Chweneyagae, Terry Pheto, Kenneth Nkosi, Mothusi Magano
Synopsis:
A young hoodlum in a South African township hijacks a suburban blackwoman's car, only to find a baby on the back seat. Something from his past makes him take it home and there begins a complex process of neglect, attachment and remorse.
Review:
Vigorous, assured, and a beacon for the fledgling native film industry, this hardhitting drama boasts a stunning performance from the lead, Chweneyagae, and a cameo from one Zola, a local Kwaito musician whose records provide some of the soundtrack's percussive hip-hop beat. It is inevitably sanitised when it comes to the nitty-gritty of the babe's predicament (even Three Men and a Baby had more nappy changes), but the violence and desperate conditions in the slums are not glossed over. The essence of the piece is that the kid has a rebirth, a second chance, and as such the story should be a focus of hope for the dispossessed: decency, a concept oft repeated in the screenplay, is the quality Tsotsi must cling to if he is to feel and inspire love, and the scenario of choice is nicely adumbrated by the symbolic mise en scène: dark and dingy for his shack, clean and dappled with light in the case of Miriam's, his coerced wet-nurse, while the baby's home is all security gates, consumer comfort, style and bottles of wine.