Tsotsi

FROM THE LINER NOTES

Tsotsi means “thug” or “gangster” in the street language of South Africa’s townships. In director Gavin Hood’s new film about the legacy of that country’s deprivation and violence, it is the only name by which we know the main character, a moniker he has taken as a proclamation to the world. Adapted from a novel by the eminent South African playwright Athol Fugard and set in the gritty, hair-trigger environment of the Johannesburg ghettos, the film is relentless in its portrayal of one man’s battle with his own brutal nature and the past that bred it.

One night, after winning a bloody bar fight, Tsotsi (Presley Chweneyagae) comes upon an opportunity for a spontaneous carjacking. Speeding away in the stolen BMW, he is startled by a sound from the back seat and crashes the car on a deserted highway. Seemingly nonplussed to discover a small infant there, he abandons the vehicle and the baby. Moments later, some long-neglected instinct compels him to return, scoop the baby into a shopping bag and hustle through the darkness to his ramshackle home in the townships.

Realizing almost immediately that he has neither the skills nor the temperament to care for a child, Tsotsi zeroes in on Miriam (Terry Pheto), a young mother in his neighbourhood, and forces her at gunpoint into caring for “his” baby. Tsotsi’s uneasy, negotiated relationship with Miriam and the child aims at his redemption but provokes a volcanic chain of events resulting in yet more confrontation.

As Tsotsi, Chweneyagae has extraordinary charisma and power, utterly believable as a powder keg of potential violence that conceals an aching, childlike core. When faced with the grace and dignity of Miriam, his drive to save himself through a child is a natural yearning. Ably guided by Hood and surrounded by the raw energy of South African Kwaito music, Tsotsi and Miriam become symbols of the struggle towards dignity and away from poverty, violence and a cold, hard world.