S. African movie shows how quickly life changes

I've found it to be true, in my relatively cushy life, that a revelation can strike the mind like lightning and wildly alter one's perspective.

Some refer to that as "clicking," as if an unseen force flips a mental switch that exposes a truth. And with that illumination comes change, be it temporary or everlasting.

Indulge me in a personal anecdote. I used to smoke in moderation, and that escalated predictably into excess. One afternoon, I quit. No buildup, fanfare or parade. I just pitched the remnants of my pack, and that was that. This happened 11 months ago.

What I rejected was a poison. Everybody tries to do this, whether the poison is alcohol, dessert, negative thinking, gambling or unkindness. Sometimes the poison is much more potent, as is the case in "Tsotsi," a South African drama that tackles this theme with graver subject matter. It took the Oscar in March for Best Foreign Language Film.

"Tsotsi" means "thug," in this case a nickname for a young boy (Presley Chweneyagae) who leads a gang that's experimenting with more serious crimes, such as random murder in public. The four of them live separately in a lawless township in Johannesburg, South Africa's largest city that has both wealthy areas and shantytowns still parched from apartheid.

Boston (Mothusi Magano), a college dropout with a drinking problem, is the moral voice of the foursome (a deleted scene exposes his hypocrisy, however). He takes issue with the group's new methods of thievery.

Butcher (Zenzo Ngqobe) is the coldest and most venomous in the gang, and Aap (Kenneth Nkosi) is the wide-eyed follower.

As leader, Tsotsi organizes jobs with stone-faced reticence. His face has a womanly quality, perhaps because of his tender age, but his expressions are chiseled and unfeeling. He looks as if, at any moment, he could explode in rage, or walk off in ambivalence.

After Boston makes a comment that pokes at Tsotsi's sensitive past, Tsotsi pummels Boston ferociously. Tsotsi then wanders into the rain, shoots a woman, steals her car, crashes it and finds a baby in the back seat.

Tsotsi doesn't know what to do and has no one to turn to, so he takes the baby to his shack and puts him under his bed. When he notices a stench, he replaces the diaper with awkwardly crumpled newspaper, while the baby wails.

Eventually, Tsotsi needs to feed the little guy, so he uses threats to get a nearby woman, Miriam (Terry Pheto), to nurse the baby. Temperamentally, Miriam is Tsotsi's opposite. She's nurturing, crafty and generous. They have starkly different ways of dealing with past abandonment issues.

These circumstances provide the "clicking" that sends Tsotsi into an uncharted state of introspection. He undergoes a fundamental moral change as he connects what's happening now to what's happened in his past. He even gives the baby his real name, David.

Throughout this, the film returns to the family he damaged. The woman he shot may never walk again, and the police are pessimistic about apprehending the culprit, as they have nothing to go on except a police sketch. Looking for a specific criminal in the township is like looking for a specific fish in the ocean.

Though Tsotsi earns our affection, we never want him to keep the baby. We want him to realize that returning the child is the right thing to do.

Materials for "Tsotsi" tout it as a "tale of redemption," but I'd characterize it as an examination of empathy and of the way change can barrel into one's psyche. Tsotsi starts as one person and ends as someone vastly different, in the matter of about a week.

And yet "Tsotsi" is not a simpleminded bad-to-good parable at all. Even as Tsotsi seems eager to be kind, he still lacks some necessary guidance, and he commits a shocking act that makes us question whether he's capable of true change.

I highly recommend viewers look at the two alternate endings, then watch them with commentary from the director (Gavin Hood). There also are three deleted scenes. One helps clarify developments between Tsotsi and Miriam, and I feel strongly that that scene should have survived the final cut.

Some may doubt the extent of Tsotsi's moralistic turn. But I can buy that someone as small as a baby can flip that internal switch and cause a very big change.


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