In Anthony Burgess’ classic novel A Clockwork Orange, a young thug named Alex wrecks fun-havoc on innocents in the streets and homes of a futuristic, Soviet-American meld-world. In Gavin Hood’s Tsotsi, the future is present-day South Africa and the thug is named thug. The similarities between the two works are striking. Both Orange and Tsotsi begin with a stunning act of violence committed against an old man, for example. A beating up real nice like and a knife to the gulliver—Alex for funnies, Tsotsi for monies.
Next, there’s a trip to the Korova Milkbar, which in Tsotsi is run by a large black woman and populated by living black figures, as opposed to the milk-white plastic women adorning the bar in Stanley Kubrick’s film adaptation. In South Africa, Milkplus even becomes milk plus, for thugs.
The first key incident in both works is also similar: Alex’s accidental murder of a defenseless old woman in Orange is transformed into Tsotsi’s accidental theft of a child. Both actions, perpetrated under the umbrella of ransacking a house for loot, against women, and done without premeditation, set their respective characters on their respective journeys. Meanwhile, our main characters’ droogs turn against them and there’s fighting between the former pals.
Back into the fire, Alex and Tsotsi make confused return visits to the places of former crimes: to the house of a past rape in Orange and to the house of the parents of the stolen child in Tsotsi. However, whereas Alex returns as a thoroughly de-dangerous’ed new man, Tsotsi comes once again as a criminal. By this time, the victim in Orange is Alex while in Tsotsi the victim remains the same.
Finally, the proper authorities arrive to “save the day”: Alex has his Ludovico treatment reversed and is photographed next to some high-ranking bureaucrats and Tsotsi…
Though not related to the plot, another interesting parallel between the works is the use of language. The Nadsat language invented by Burgess—a cross between English and Russian—finds its brat in the Zulu-Afrikaans-English combination spoken in Tsotsi.
The world of Tsotsi is divided in two: the dirty, crowded—yet lively—shantytown that Tsotsi inhabits; and the more peaceful, richer city and surrounding suburbs to which the baby and his parents belong. Between these distinct zones lies a dusty wasteland populated by sparse greenery and perpetually unneeded industrial materials that has become a makeshift playground for children from the shantytown.
During the film, Tsotsi makes the journey across this wasteland three times. The way in which the film presents the rich area and the poor—geographically linked by a short walk but worlds apart in everything else—is one of its greatest strengths.
Though Tsotsi never uses poverty as an excuse, it asks the viewer to consider the ways in which these two zones influence and affect one another: rich and poor, rich versus poor. Because all of the major characters are black, the film makes certain issues of race do not cloud those of class—it is money, not race, that makes one character fat and another hungry. Though only one of these interactions between well-to-do and wanting is looked at directly, taken beyond the films’ temporal boundaries, it is but one collision on a whole chain.
That Tsotsi shoots a woman and steals her baby is horrific; but is it also a metaphor? Hood loads his film with obvious, though in-the-background, references to AIDS and intentionally juxtaposes the huts in which Tsotsi lives with the skyscrapers of Johannesburg to create a physical imbalance between the zones: healthy and tall in contrast to sick and short. Is the infanticide only occurring in one direction, or does the wasteland lie between the shantytown and the city?
It’s easy to read Tsotsi’s transformation as an example of the standard, seen-it-before redemption that most main characters in mainstream films tend to undergo. The poster even tells you to do just that. However, it’s much more interesting to see Tsotsi as a story about another big R-word: responsibility.
When Tsotsi jacks a car and a finds a baby in the back seat, he panics. The baby is not scary as a baby—it doesn’t even have teeth to bite Tsotsi him with—but it is scary as a sign of a catching-up past. As a symbol, the baby functions as the tangible proof of a bad deed done.
Despite music that will try to make you experience the film’s final scene as a heroic redemption, don’t be fooled; there’s a little more to it than that. On a personal level, the scene is the ultimate representation of taking responsibility for one’s actions, consequences be damned. And, on a “message” level, it’s about learning to deal with problems of inequality and crime by humanizing and trying to understand them—the feel-good message the Oscar voters went for (best Foreign-language film).
When I started watching Tsotsi, I expected to see another City of God. What I got was closer to Alfie, and I’m gladder for it. Tsotsi is about a boy who meets a baby and becomes a responsible man. It is also about the morally ambivalent yet strangely malleable power released when two worlds collide. It’s not a bad film.
Pacze Moj
© Cinephile Magazine, 2006