African films, like films from other continents, claim varying degrees of quality. Scarcely any merit, though, can be imputed to the 2005 Oscar-winning Tsotsi, by Gavin Hood. (For examples of superior African cinema, please consult my list of the 100 Greatest Films from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, which you will find elsewhere on this site.) Working from a 1980 novel about 1950s (Apartheid) South Africa by Athol Fugard that he updates willy-nilly to the present, Hood has snugly shoehorned the messy complexity of reality into a pattern of unlikely redemption. The protagonist of this South African film—his street name, Tsotsi, means thug—is a vicious nineteen-year-old killer who ends up with a baby in his care after carjacking a rich woman’s vehicle. The infant melts his heart. Dub this movie One Man and a Baby.
The journey that Thug makes in becoming a better person, with real drip in his eyes, doesn’t happen smoothly. Thug stumbles along the upward arc of his predetemined path. For instance, he holds a neighbor at gunpoint when he wants her to nurse the baby. Poor Thug! He doesn’t know how to express himself more nicely. He has such a row to hoe. In the meantime, the despair of ghetto poverty—the film is set in Soweto, outside Johannesburg—is relegated to window dressing.
The film stars Presley Chweneyagae, who is girlishly pretty along Denzel Washington-lines. Chweneyagae does his best to register the gradual nature of Thug’s transformation. Or should I say transfiguration? Just when you think that Hood couldn’t possibly become more sentimental, he engineers a backlit shot of Thug that likens him to You-Know-Who. Of course, Jesus is allegedly capable of redeeming Thugs. But in none of the Gospels, as I recall, is he one himself.
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This entry was posted on July 22, 2007 at 6:02 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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TSOTSI (Gavin Hood, 2005)
African films, like films from other continents, claim varying degrees of quality. Scarcely any merit, though, can be imputed to the 2005 Oscar-winning Tsotsi, by Gavin Hood. (For examples of superior African cinema, please consult my list of the 100 Greatest Films from Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, which you will find elsewhere on this site.) Working from a 1980 novel about 1950s (Apartheid) South Africa by Athol Fugard that he updates willy-nilly to the present, Hood has snugly shoehorned the messy complexity of reality into a pattern of unlikely redemption. The protagonist of this South African film—his street name, Tsotsi, means thug—is a vicious nineteen-year-old killer who ends up with a baby in his care after carjacking a rich woman’s vehicle. The infant melts his heart. Dub this movie One Man and a Baby.
The journey that Thug makes in becoming a better person, with real drip in his eyes, doesn’t happen smoothly. Thug stumbles along the upward arc of his predetemined path. For instance, he holds a neighbor at gunpoint when he wants her to nurse the baby. Poor Thug! He doesn’t know how to express himself more nicely. He has such a row to hoe. In the meantime, the despair of ghetto poverty—the film is set in Soweto, outside Johannesburg—is relegated to window dressing.
The film stars Presley Chweneyagae, who is girlishly pretty along Denzel Washington-lines. Chweneyagae does his best to register the gradual nature of Thug’s transformation. Or should I say transfiguration? Just when you think that Hood couldn’t possibly become more sentimental, he engineers a backlit shot of Thug that likens him to You-Know-Who. Of course, Jesus is allegedly capable of redeeming Thugs. But in none of the Gospels, as I recall, is he one himself.
Like this:
This entry was posted on July 22, 2007 at 6:02 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.