In the motion picture, “Tsotsi,” directed by Gavin Hood, Tsosti is a teenager without feelings, hardened by his tough life. Tsosti was not a criminal just because he encountered a hard lifestyle from young causing him interact in violent crimes for survival. After a series of violent crimes, he hijacks a car while driving and finds that there is a baby on the back seat. He brings the baby to his house in the slum and he began to find himself. Tsosti childhood caused him to make engage in violence but finding the child made him discover love and David.
While having the baby, Tsosti began to change, starting with a scene when. He leaves the baby in his room and goes out into the city, to the train station. In the busyness of the station, Tsotsi accidentally trips over the cripple, whom spits and curse at him. Tsotsi decides to follow him out of the station to an abandoned alley. The first reaction of the viewer is that he will kill the cripple man because of the attitude and history of Tsosti. Instead of being violent, Tsosti follows and interrogate him to show the man that you do not have to be mean to the world.
While teaching the cripple a lesson, the man reminds him of his childhood, the time he was talking to his bed-ridden sick mother when his drunken father came home cursing and yelling, and frustrated with their dog, kicked it twice and broke its legs. The crippled man represents the broken society, he asks, “What kind of man kicks a dog? ” A coincidence that right after Tsotsi has kidnapped the infant he meets the man and sees a resemblance between the cripple and his childhood dog.
The baby and the image of the broken dog and crippled man shows how Tsosti was torn apart due to colonization and creates no feelings, a vicious and violent cycle. The next time he meets the cripple later in the film is during the afternoon, the sun still up, when he is on his way to restore the child to its family. He gives the old man money and kneeled while talking to him After the kidnapping, the baby is teaching Tsosti responsibility and that he can trust other individuals. He is forced to think outside of himself, and of another life.
Tsotsi begins to put the baby before himself and quickly realizes he cannot give the baby the care he deserves. Tsotsi, desperate to keep the baby alive, follows Miriam who is carrying a bucket of water on her shack he enter her house and threatens her to feed the baby at gunpoint. At first, she is seen by Tsotsi as a tool to be used in order to gain what he wants, which he always did to make it in life, although as the film progresses, he begins to value her and respect her as a mother who cares for her child.
Tsotsi’s relationship with Miriam shows that Tsotsi is desperate to be a mother figure, something that he never had. She influences Tsosti that she should return the baby, he realizes that his childhood was broken and he should not put the child in the same predicament. At the end of the film, Tsotsi confronts the parents of the baby and the police are there. As Tsotsi stands in front of the parents, with police pointing guns at him and the baby in his arms, he struggle to decide what to do.
Throughout the film, he would always wear dark color clothes while returning the baby Tsotsi’s wears a white shirt is a hint that Tsotsi has a change of heart. The white signifies purity and innocence. Tsosti means “thug,” Is Tsosti really a thug? I believe Tsosti may have took part in many violent things but it was only for survival and the lack of parenthood. He always had love and compassion in him, it took for one incident finding the baby to find himself. The three incidents I stated showed how Tsosti had decency all along.
