Hi, everyone. "Moriarty" here with some Rumblings From The Lab...
I heard a few things about this film after it played at Toronto, but I made sure I didn’t read anything too detailed. I wanted to see it as fresh as possible. When I saw it show up on the schedule of press screenings for the fest, I made it my top priority out of all the screenings.
So, of course, I showed up late. Or rather, I got to the AFI campus on time, then spent 20 minutes trying to find parking. I eventually did, but all the way down by the front gate. When I finally got to the Goodson, the doors were all locked. It took another five minutes to get inside.
And despite such a frustrating start to the screening, I’m pretty sure this is the best thing I’ve seen all year.
Written and directed by Gavin Hood, adapted from a novel by Athol Fugard, TSOTSI is a powerful, piercing story about compassion that works on a personal, emotional level but also makes some cogent points about the larger world. It may be one of the most immediately accessible parables I’ve ever seen. You can watch the film without ever thinking of the larger implications, and you’ll still bave a complete experience. On the other hand, if you open yourself to this film’s message, it’s nothing less than transformative.
Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) lives in a shack in a shantytown on the outskirts of Johannesburg, South Africa. He’s 19 years old, already hardened by years on the streets, and he runs with a rough crew. They’re all scared of him, though. He’s crazier than any of them. It’s like there’s some essential part of him that has died. Tsotsi isn’t even his real name. It’s just street slang for “thug” or “gangster,” and it’s the only name anyone has for him. The only people he shows any regard for are his friends, Boston (Mothusi Magano), Butcher (Zenso Ngqobe), and Aap (Kenneth Nkosi).
One night, after a brutal mugging escalates into a murder, Boston dares to challenge Tsotsi’s sense of wrong and right. Boston studied to be a teacher, but got sidetracked by his own alcoholism, and he seems himself as the one member of the crew who knows better. He interrogates Tsotsi, practically taunts him, until Tsotsi snaps and beats the living shit out of Boston, almost killing him.
Tsotsi wanders off into the night, torn up and determined to stay sealed off, to not let anything touch him at all. In a harrowing scene, he confronts a woman in her driveway and, at gunpoint, steals her car, shooting her in the stomach and leaving her for dead. Once he crashes the car, he finds something unexpected in the backseat: an infant boy.
The entire film, from that point on, is all about Tsotsi grappling with the question from Boston that set him off in the first place. “Who do you love? Have you ever loved anything? Your mother? Your father? Even a dog?” Using very smart cuts back to Tsotsi’s childhood, we learn not only what drove him onto the streets, but also what moments define him. What baggage does someone carry to make them into a killer? Through it all, Presley Chweyneyagae’s performance never strikes a false note. He is nothing less than riveting in every scene.
I’m sure that the intense visceral reaction I had to certain scenes has to do with the fact that I’m a new parent. Tsotsi isn’t equipped to deal with the baby he finds, and some of the early mistakes he makes with the baby are horrific. There’s one moment involving ants that had me crawling out of my skin. When Tsotsi needs to feed the baby, he targets a young mother he sees carrying her own infant. He forces her to nurse “his” baby at gunpoint. Miriam (Terry Pheto) is terrified, but she can also see that the baby needs help, and her maternal instinct kicks in.
Tsotsi is changed by the experience, but not in the easy, happy Hollywood way we’re almost conditioned to expect. He’s a confused kid when all is said and done, not Lex fucking Luthor. This isn’t some master plan he’s following. He reacts based on pure instinct. He’s rotten, truly corroded at the start of the film. The movie shows you why, but it doesn’t make excuses for him. Even some of the “good” things he does in the film are destructive, awful. That’s all he knows. Gavin Hood’s shooting style is pretty much the exact opposite of Fernando Mierelles, but this film affected me in much the same way that CITY OF GOD did. Hood’s got an amazing eye, using his full 2.35:1 frame to maximum effect. The film is sleek, never frantic. There’s no shaky cam here. The last thing you think about during even the tensest moments is the camera. Hood makes you care about these people, creates a true intimacy with them. It’s one of those indefinable gifts that marks a great filmmaker... the ability to make you forget you’re watching a movie. One of the reasons I railed so hard on DOMINO last week was because that sort of hyper-aware stylization distances me more than it draws me in. You’re always aware, “Yes, this is a movie,” because the movie keeps reminding you, over and over. With TSOTSI, I just got lost in the everyday reality of life in a Soweto shantytown.
You want an explicit political message? You could say that the wealthy countries of the world are Tsotsi, violent and frightening, seemingly without any boundaries, and the baby represents the third world. Until we learn to care about those who need our help, we are fundamentally selfish, living lives of destruction. The film doesn’t wallow in images of poverty, and it doesn’t oversell things. It’s just that I can’t imagine the reality of life for Tsotsi. In one scene, he goes to visit a stack of short concrete pipes where he used to live. He meets the kids who live there now. As young as Tsotsi seems (and 19 seems very young to me these days), seeing those seven and eight year olds, homeless and alone already, it really drives home just how long Tsotsi’s been at it. As I understand it, Hood changed several things when adapting this from Athol Fugard’s novel. It’s a tremendous piece of film writing, managing to tell a story that’s largely internal without resorting to voice-over narration. He shows us what’s inside Tsotsi. He makes connections clearly without belaboring the point. What’s impressive to me is how close we came to seeing a very different version of this film. At one point, Hood was thinking about making the film in English, with internationally recognizable actors. Instead, he opted for unknowns, performing in “Tsotsi-Tall,” the common language of the streets of Soweto. Great choice, and it makes all the difference. Using authentic “kwaito” dance music on the soundtrack gives the film a unique flavor. Director of photography Lance Gewer’s work is rich and memorable, warm but not overly romantic. He doesn’t pretty up this world, but he does manage to find some beauty in it.
I would consider TSOTSI to be an important film for a post-Weinstein Miramax. In a world where the best performances of the year are the ones that are truly recognized, then both Presley Chweyneyagae and Terry Pheto would be nominated for Oscars. You may see other great performances this year, but this is the definition of great film acting. I believe both of them utterly every time they’re onscreen. Harvey Weinstein could have turned this film into a buzz event. He could have sold it to the Academy. That was his gift, the reason Miramax was such a reliable Oscar machine. Now the new Miramax faces a test of their own prowess. I pray they rise to the occasion.
TSOTSI is both entertainment and art, and it marks Gavin Hood as one of the most important new voices in film. It plays as part of the AFI Film Festival in Hollywood on Friday Nov. 4th, at 7:15, and again on Saturday the 5th at 3:00. I’ll definitely be there for at least one of those two shows, and I can’t stress this strongly enough: do not miss it.
"Moriarty" out.
