This may sound ludicrous but there wasn't much about "Tsotsi" one cannot find in the ghettos of the USA with the exception of the 'child community' where this young South African survived to adulthood. It was that 'child community' that brought him away from complete demise of himself.
The film is very violent but it is also very starkly real. An introduction of the film was made regarding the reality of these young men of South Africa and their continued existance in an economy of violence and crime. To counter that the South Africans that are victimized by these young men are 'self-protected' by iron fences and alarms. Not very different from the USA in many ways. There is a police force but they are twarted in their prevention of crime so much as responding to it after the fact. There are absolutely no social programs providing hope for these young South Africans.
Tsotsi finds himself alone in a hostile world of crime with piers his own age in order to survive. As a result a paradox of events happens. He ends up taking an infant from it's home after the mother was shot. She didn't die, but, the young vandals didn't know that. There is no ransom note or kidnapping per se, just a lonely young man in search of some meaning to his life. The infant required food and diaper changes and all the things infants require including amusing 'mobiles' to enhance their curiosity and as amusement.
The story unfolds in a severely poverty stricken area of an urban environment where Tsotsi is forced to seek help in taking care of the infant. He forces an already lactating mother to take on another infant. In time and through more crime he returns to her with powdered formula and a bottle. He no longer needs her help and takes the infant on himself. He seeks out his old 'child-in-the-hood' territory. It is a series of large unused sewer pipes where children seek shelter and protection from storms and sun alike while looking out for each other. Tsotsi hopes these children will be able to give care to the infant and raise him as he once was raised. They were overwhelmed at the thought so he leaves them and then sets out to return the infant to his home.
The young South African finds himself when he tries to compassionately care for an infant. He projects love and receives it in return though satisfying the infants needs in accomplishment and the smiles the baby occassionally expresses as infants will. The movie ends on a positive note with the infant returned to the parents in a very upscale neighborhood voluntarily by Tsotsi through a tense moment with police. The father, a successful South African, is magnificent with his now paralyzed wife at his side in the final scene of the film. It is he that perceives Tsotsi's life although remanding him to the police and most likely a trial. The outcome past that is anyone's guess, but, more than likely a jail cell for some length of time will make this young African's return from violence resulting in compassion toward an infant, a return to it.
The film is poignant. It needed to be made and the production is flawless. It is a statement about not just South Africa and it's social difficulties but poverty in general. Where there is no outreach there is no hope and the people that are borne into poverty frequently live in it's dynamics including crime and punishment endlessly, while the society that tries to protect itself from it provides no real incentive for an alternative to it.
It's a difficult film to watch. More difficult than Hotel Rwanda. I have a feeling many Rap Artists would find commonality in some of the realities Tsotsi lived.
