OVP: Tsotsi (2005)

Film: Tsotsi (2005)
Stars: Presley Chweneyagae, Mothusi Magano, Kenneth Nkosi, Zenzo Ngqobe, Terry Pheto
Director: Gavin Hood
Oscar History: 1 nod/1 win (Best Foreign Language Film-South Africa*)
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

Oscar likes to be important, and as a result, he frequently honors films with important subjects.  This has been true of the Foreign Language Film category for years, but in the past decade or so they've tried to reengage with the concept of an "important" movie by also making sure the films are well-made.  Movies like The White Ribbon, A Separation, Embrace of the Serpent, and Cold War are all incredible pictures, and the sorts of films that probably wouldn't have been nominated a decade ago even though they do deal with politically or historically-relavent subjects.  As we go deeper into the OVP (one of my goals for 2020 will be to finish off this century, at least in terms of viewing films), we're going to find why this change occurred, as we get to movies like Tsotsi.  This isn't a bad movie (which you know now-while the star rating is the last thing I add when I write, it's surely the first and perhaps only part of this review you're going to look at), but it is the sort of generic, "important" picture that dominated this category from about the 1970's all the way until the early part of the aughts, the era which foreign-language films went from being a vital part of the cinematic conversation (Fellini, Bergman, Godard...all directors of movies people actually would have seen & discussed in the 60's), to being a category you go get more popcorn for during the Oscars ceremony.

(Spoilers Ahead) The picture is about Tsotsi (Chweneyagae), whose real name is David.  He ran away from an abusive home when he was a boy, and now lives on the streets with other gang members.  During a botched robbery which ends in murder and another woman being shot, Tsotsi finds that he's stolen a car with an infant in it.  He struggles to know what to do with the child, initially blackmailing a young mother who lives near him named Miriam (Pheto) to breastfeed and care for the baby, and slowly his gang abandons him as he starts to put the well-being the child ahead of their own, getting one of his gang members killed during a robbery as they return to the home of the baby's parents.  The film ends with Tsotsi doing the right thing, returning the baby to its (now injured because of Tsotsi's actions) parents, and being arrested, realizing that he can have a better life if he tries for it.

The movie is way too sugary in its approach to the ending, and to its premise.  The concept of a good-hearted criminal being reformed by an innocent child is hardly new territory, and Tsotsi is frequently about coloring in the lines.  The film brushes by most conversations about poverty or masculinity (though they're there if you look hard enough), and instead wants to have a tale of a man who gets better from love.  This is more an alien concept in modern cinema than it used to be, but as I'm someone who spends 60% of their time watching older films rather than modern ones, I'm a terrible audience for a retread because I'll usually go back for the original at that point.

That said, Tsotsi is by no means a bad movie.  Chweneyagae and Pheto are both solid, particularly Pheto, who brings a cool edge to her character.  You understand pretty quickly that she's not going to be a love interest (a truly bad movie would have had her fall in love with Tsotsi), and instead is someone who is interested in the survival of she and her child first...everyone else is incidental.  The conversations between she and Tsotsi are the best and most interesting part of the movie, and you almost wish they'd just kept Tsotsi coming back there, learning through a woman who chose a different, more difficult path from the beginning what his life could have been, rather than the ones that the filmmakers insist he recover from.  Tsotsi is action-packed, cliched, and the type of film that screams "message picture!" but that doesn't mean it doesn't have something worthwhile to say.