About films

Sara Martinez Mares, M1

TSOTSI

“Tsotsi” is the name of a very interesting film. The title means “killer” and it is the main's character name. I can start, then, by saying that the film is about a boy who lives in a shanty town in the middle of Johannesburgo.

I have, first, to contextualize these lives: Tsotsi dind't use to work, but when he and friends spoke about “doing a job” it meant that they would go at the city and would mug someone using weapons. Once they killed a man with no purpose and here is where the drama beggins. Tsotsi had a fight with his best friend, the Teacher, who tried to make Tsotsi reflect about what they did. When he had asked him where his mother was – in order to get out of him if he once had loved someone –, Tsotsi knocked him out and run away.

Whenever he stopped running, he saw a rich woman parking her car and automatically he stole the car – taking for granted he would sell it – and shot the woman who desesperatly tried to stop him. Suddenly he noticed that a baby was crying in the backside of the car. He decided not to leave the baby there, so Tsotsi took him. In the next morning he found out he had to feed the baby, but found out too that he could take care of someone and could do something good for him. The shoking part is that he had no ideas of how doing it. And then, something brilliant came across his mind: he saw a woman who had a baby too, he followed her and getting into her house forced her (of course, using his gun) to feed Tsotsi's baby. Meanwhile, he started to know the beauty of things, the clean house, the lights and colors of the woman's craftwork and, furthermore... he dind't notice he was falling in love with her.

Concluding this rude, but tender, story, it comes to a surprising end: he obeyed the woman who told him to give back the baby to his real family; without forgetting a really touching condition Tsotsi gave her: if he returned him, she would let him to ser her again. She said yes.