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| courtesy
photo |
| A
2005 nominee for the Best Foreign Film Academy Award,
the South African film "Tsotsi," based on
a novel by Athol Fugard, offers an insightful glimpse
of post apartheid life in Soweto. |
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Ghetto
fighter "Tsotsi" is a winner
by David Germain - Associated Press
Far from the ghetto streets of Soweto, the South African drama
"Tsotsi" resonates with a raw freshness and immediacy
and an almost mythic sense of reclamation and redemption.
This year's Academy Awards Foreign Language Film of the Year,
"Tsotsi" brings Athol Fugard's novel about the mean
streets of 1950s South Africa into modern times, updating
the story to offer an insightful glimpse of post apartheid
life, from its most violently severe to its most culturally
vibrant.
Director Gavin Hood, who also wrote the screenplay, packs
a poetic spiritual journey into an intense hour and a half,
tracing a teen's transformation from mindlessly robotic thug
to incipient manchild experiencing his first stirrings of
compassion and decency. |
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Propelled by
the beat crazy "Kwaito" music of co star and South African
pop singer Zola, "Tsotsi" presents a sterling film debut
by Presley Chweneyagae in the title role as a young gang leader
whose anger and animal ferocity seemingly doom him to early death.
In "Tsotsi Taal," the street language of Soweto used in
the film, "Tsotsi" is a generic term for thug or gangster.
Chweneyagae's Tsotsi embodies that identity, a 19 year old orphan
who raised himself and learned in the process that evoking fear
in others was his surest means to survive and thrive.
Tsotsi leads a strange gang of bad boys: Ex teacher Boston (Mothusi
Magano), vicious killer Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe) and lame brained
but loyal bruiser Aap (Kenneth Nkosi).
At a bar one drunken night, Boston pushes inscrutable Tsotsi to
share some personal shred of his dark and hidden past. Tsotsi seems
to have repressed all childhood memories and sprung full blown as
an alpha wolf of the streets, yet Boston's taunting pleas spark
buried feelings of anxiety and dread in the gang leader.
Tsotsi responds the only way he knows how, with rage. He viciously
beats Boston, then sensing the repugnance of the other bar patrons
and the members of his gang, Tsotsi flees.
Whatever raw nerve the incident has touched in Tsotsi, the random
events that follow set him on a course of either damnation or deliverance.
Tsotsi finds himself on the lam from police after a carjacking goes
awry, resulting in violence and leaving him in possession of a 3
month old baby that he finds himself incapable of abandoning.
All of this action is packed into the movie's opening moments, the
remainder of the film slowly revealing the humanity Tsotsi has hidden
from the world and even from himself.
Central to his metamorphosis is Miriam (Terry Pheto), a young widow
with an infant of her own, who becomes surrogate mother to both
Tsotsi and the baby in his keeping.
Hood draws stellar performances from the entire cast, but newcomer
Chweneyagae makes the movie, proving an absolute natural with a
fierce presence and old soul melancholy that belie his youthful
face.
The songs of Zola, who has a brief role as an animated associate
of Tsotsi's gang, provide an infectious backdrop that both contrasts
the film's deliberate pace and complements Soweto's gritty, vigorous
street life. "Kwaito" music is an amalgam of dance, rap
and pop styles whose heavy beat reflects an air of pride and defiance
among South African townships after apartheid.
Fugard has noted that while the film moves his story ahead half
a century, it captures the spirit of the novel.
Imbuing "Tsotsi" with a lyrical savagery reminiscent of
the Brazilian boys with guns drama "City of God," Hood
has crafted a film rooted in South Africa's here and now yet still
timeless in its examination of the healing power of human connection.
"Tsotsi," a Miramax release, is rated R for language and
some strong violent content. Running time: 94 minutes. Three and
a half stars out of four.
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