Tsotsi

If the purpose of art is to transport the soul - to share the experience of being human- then this film is art in it's highest form. A film of this magnitude transports us, and not only to a foreign land but to the foreign heart as well. The foreign land is South Africa. The foreign heart is that of a "tsotsi," a street thug, and it is a heart so full of darkness and violence that it chills us to the bone.

The blue South African sky seems an unlikely backdrop to the urban ugliness of Johannesburg, where street gangs slide out of the ghetto shantytown to prey on the upper classes. Tsotsi is the icy leader of these violent misfits, a boy without a real name, angry and lethal. One rash act leads to another and a spiral of violence terminates in a messy carjacking of a not so empty car - there's a baby on board. If our hero were as empty as he seems, this may have been a really short film, but something about that vulnerability touches the human in the monster, and he decides to keep it.

Presley Chweneyagae is an actor of remarkable ability. His Tsotsi spends a good deal of this film doing unspeakable things that usually involve guns and/or copious amounts of blood and yet he paints a portrait of a man unravelling. It doesn't happen quickly or magically like it would in an American movie, but Tsotsi rediscovers his humanity. It may be cliche to say that this is a film about the transformative power of love, but if you can make it through the last 10 minutes of this film without crying, check your pulse. No wonder it won the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2006.

Postscript: the language is a fascinating blend of Zulu, Dutch and English. See another review here.