I saw Tsotsi this evening, a much awarded film set in a Johannesburg township and based on a novel by Athol Fugard. I notice that films which receive this many awards, tend to be sentimental. They are often some sort of redemption narrative. This is especially true when they are foreign. It is as though the familiarity of melodrama made up for the foreignness of the setting.
Tsotsi was no exception. Seeing it was like receiving an injection of pain, and I say this as a person used to watching sad films from the global South. In this film, a great deal of the pain and suffering represented, seemed to be there not so much to show anything in particular as to tire the audience, make them feel as though they had been through something. The story is not particularly original, and it muddies more than it clarifies.
One worthwhile point which can be drawn from this film, however, is that not just the ‘criminal justice system’ but perhaps the very idea of criminal justice, addresses very little. This is not a new insight, but it is worth bringing to the foreground.
I also discovered that I could understand much of the Afrikaans dialogue, on the strength of my English and Danish. This was fascinating. Every language I learn, gives me more languages than I realize.
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
How lucky you are to pick up languages. I do not have the ear at all. I studied spanish for a while (when I had the novios! HAH!) but could only try to talk or read. I had a hard time understanding what someone was saying unless they said it real real slowwww… I will probably take Spanish again in the Spring (my first attempt was Fall 87). If I get into a PhD program in the UC system I will have to prove a second language after my first qualifying exam, so I should start now.
What do you think of
The Herzog-Kinski Collection
a.k.a. The Werner Herzog-Klaus Kinski Collection?
Oh, have you read Olive Schreiner, Story of an Aftican Farm? If so, did you like it?
I need to read Olive Schreiner. I like the Herz0g-
Kinski collection. It doesn’t include my favorite of these, though, Burden of Dreams (by Les Blank) which covers a lot of the same material as My Favorite Fiend, but is also a very good (if unintentional on Herzog’s part) parody of colonialism. Focuses less on Kinski, more on Herzog, and is very funny.
Hello professor! Tsotsi definitely fell short of my expectations. I went to see it with my wife. She felt that the film was very surface and not completely true in it’s depiction of the township. There were some entertaining moments, but I wouldn’t own it. There is another film that she mentioned to me that escapes at this moment. I’ll ask her and get back to you. It should be pretty good. It didn’t win a lot of awards. 🙂
My favorite moment in “Burden of Dreams” is about two-thirds of the way into the film when Blank turns the camera on Herzog who starts complaining about how the jungle is just so…so… teeming and doesn’t quite measure up to his somewhat romantic view of it. “It’s not erotical at all!”
I haven’t seen Tsotsi either, for the same reason. But I did rent “28 Days Later” which was billed as a a kind of zombie/horror movie, but turns out to be a (gory) political allegory with some subtexts about race, gender, and colonialism.
chiming in here to say, keep the movie recommendations coming! I need them. Middle-aged parenthood plus teaching has combined to keep me from the theater (I used to haunt L.A.’s revival houses during the 80s) but now that the little guy has an early bedtime and we have discovered netflix, well, there you go.
Back to grading papers…
I really enjoyed this film. I like that it does “muddy” more than it “clarifies”… when a film evokes conflicting emotions in regards to the main character/anti-hero… it throws one off center. The emotion which overwhelmed me most at the end of the film was compassion….
Blessings.
Asa.