Tsotsi

We head to Johannesburg, South Africa in our next film titled, Tsotsi. This film centers on a trouble youth, Tsotsi, who leads a small gang out of the township Soweto. The story shows us Tsotsi’s mentality transfer from being a ruthless criminal with no conscious to a person with a new outlook on life. Tsotsi begins his transformation when his friend Boston asks him if he ever had a dog. This somehow breaks the rough edge of him. He recalls when his father broke his dogs back. This was the last time he lived with his parents. With deep emotions leaked out he is even further weakened when he shoots a woman for her car and later finds the woman’s baby in the back seat. He keeps the baby and the presence of the baby brings back memories from his childhood. It all somehow changes his way of thinking. He wants to care for the baby and give it possibly the upbringing he never had. Tsotsi then fades away from his gang and even encourages Boston to go back to school. Eventually Tsotsi’s guilt gets the best of him and returns the baby to its father and paralyzed mother.

The setting of this film is largely set in the township of Soweto. Soweto is a former township from the Apartheid era. The depiction of this area in the film is very poor with some gang activity. According to Wikipedia, parts of Soweto rank among the poorest in Johannesburg. In the film we only really see the bad parts of Soweto, there are also more developed nicer areas. There are many areas which are reoffered to in the film as “the shacks”. These are the poverty stricken areas and crime and violence are its result. The picture attached to the left is “the shacks” in Soweto.

An issue that was prevalent in the film Yesterday was also slightly captured in Tsotsi. South Africa has the worst AIDS epidemic in the world. We see AIDS in Tsotsi as Tsotsi mother is dying of the disease. This could be one of the bigger issues into the breakup of his family. We see as Tsotsi’s father is not dealing well with her disease as he breaks the dogs back. There are a few other scenes where we can see the need for education for prevention of AIDS which was displayed on billboards in Johannesburg. We see two different billboards in the opening scenes of the movie. One billboard says “ We are all affected by HIV and AIDS”.

I found a few parts in the movie to have irony in them. There seemed to be an underlined theme of people or animals being paralyzed not being able to walk. Tsotsi was very heart broken as a child when his father broke his dogs back. This seems to play into the breaking of the soul in Tsotsi later in the movie. Tsotsi learns of the baby’s mother being paralyzed and it seems to hit him hard. This resurfaced feelings of see his dog struggling to get up. Also Tsotsi was intrigued with the homeless man who was in the wheelchair. It was almost like Tsotsi hoped he was just faking to get money.