Culture, including popular culture, follows the flag. Just
as the British Empire in its greatest hour assured the
dominance of English literature in the 19th century, so in our own day has
American popular music, dress, and film prevailed in almost every area of the
globe. Tom Cruise’s toothy smile beams from posters in Helsinki,
Chinese teenagers listen to rock and rap, and blue jeans constitute accepted
style everywhere. The rise of the American empire, like it or not, even
threatens to overwhelm the art, the expression, the identity of other cultures.
Despite the decline of once-thriving national film
industries, especially in Europe, Hollywood
has not quite yet entirely obliterated foreign cinema. Even in emerging nations
without a grand history of production, a new self awareness can sometimes
inspire filmmakers to reflect an equally new sense of identity. Tsotsi, which
recently won the Academy Award for best foreign film, indicates something of a
new spirit in South Africa,
a relatively old country with a relatively new form of government.
The movie, which features a cast of actors whose names
nobody in America
would recognize, tells a simple, straightforward story with a noticeable
absence of special effects or the sort of slickness that most contemporary
audiences expect. Filmed in a black township — i.e., a large, crowded slum
— in Johannesburg, it shows a
brief, violent period in the life of a young thug named Tsotsi
(Presley Chweneyagae) who commits some serious crimes
and hurts a number of innocent people. Ultimately, however, transformed by the
need to care for an utterly dependent human being, he acquires a greater
humanity, learning something like compassion and what one of his gang members
calls decency.
At the beginning of the film Tsotsi
and the crew he leads rob a man in a crowded commuter train, but Tsotsi takes the robbery a step further and stabs the
victim to death. When Boston (MothusiMagano), one of the gang,
sickened by the deed, berates him, Tsotsi beats his
friend savagely and runs off to commit a new crime. He steals a car and, when
the owner tries to stop him, shoots her; when he crashes the car he discovers a
baby on the back seat, the great fact that will change his life.
Impulsively, Tsotsi brings the
infant back to his shack, and finds that the baby’s needs somehow awaken a
response in him. In some comically clumsy ways, he attempts to care for his new
charge and eventually enlists, at gunpoint, a local young mother to nurse him.
A series of brief flashbacks explain something of Tsotsi’s
personality and conduct and suggest his motivation for keeping the child and,
more important, naming him.
As the police search for the abductor, whose
shooting has left the mother partially paralyzed, Tsotsi
and his gang return to the victim’s house. But while his mates search for
valuables, he fills a bag with diapers, toys, and stuffed animals. Although
that robbery ends in another murder and an increasingly desperate situation for
Tsotsi, it also paradoxically establishes some
semblance of goodness in the young man. At the end of the film his commitment
to the baby leads to some measure of redemption, a sense that he can for once
do the right thing and save a life rather than destroy one.
The movie’s fidelity to its squalid location and the
convincing reality of its people compensate for its lack of sophistication and
polish. Since the action follows an obvious course and the director relies on
strong, clear visual storytelling, the subtitles translating the unfamiliar
mixture of languages like Zulu and Afrikaans seldom seem really necessary, a
most refreshing departure from the talkiness of so
many foreign films.
The camera also, however, lingers far too long on the faces
of the actors, who often simply look at each other for long periods, as if
trying to make up their minds about a speech or a gesture. The heavy-handed
technique needlessly overstates the emotion of the film’s situations, adding
false melodrama to several naturally tense of moving encounters. Tsotsi often
seems crude and oversimplified, but its themes and contexts, and more
importantly its national origin and its appearance here, represent an important
step for South African film.
Tsotsi(R), written and
directed by Gavin Hood, is playing at Little Theatres.
This article appears in Apr 19-25, 2006.
