DRAG MOVIES

TSOTSI is not the South African remake of the Dustin Hoffman film, TOOTSIE, not at all. At no point does young Tsotsi, radical as he may be with his violence and subsequent moral turn-around, at no point does he dress in drag—not to hold up a man on the subway, not to harass a man in a wheelchair, not to force a woman at gunpoint to breastfeed a baby.

It wasn’t his baby. He stole the baby, but that was by mistake, everything else was intentional. He shot the mother and I couldn’t figure out why she was coming back toward her car as Tsotsi was stealing it, the viewer doesn’t find out until you hear the baby cry. Long away from the crime scene, long away from its mother, long away from where the car functioned, Tsotsi takes the baby with him. In a hopelessly surprising move, he puts the baby in a shopping bag and begins his change. Tsotsi is at the end of his rope, where he can hold on no longer, and now he holds a baby as well. Priorities shift. Paradigms change. The baby needs a change!

How a newspaper diaper works in conjunction with excess neglect is beyond my suspension of disbelief, but okay. It’s a movie, no human beings were harmed in the making of this….but Tsotsi is seen killing ants off the baby’s face, so red flag to the animal rights activists. Maybe they were computer-generated ants.

Anyway, with a lecture on decency in his head, a lecture delivered by a friend whom he beats to cosmetic oblivion, all Tsotsi needs is some tenderness. He finds it in his care of the infant and tenderness begins to grow inside of him. He gives the baby back. He refuses the easy answers and he gives the baby back to the arms of the father, not on the ground or in the shopping bag, not following police instructions, he gives the baby back into the arms of the father. Then he gives himself up, a christ with arms extended away from his body, ready to give all of himself. Roll credits.

The South African setting doesn’t particularly inform on nationality or ethnicity. (Or if it does, it’s lost something in translation.) The story could have happened anywhere poverty exists outside of opulence, and vice versa. It could have happened in English as easily as it happened in Tsotsi-Taal. Despite the violence, despite the cute baby, despite the beautiful breast feeder, this morality tale does not stretch beyond archetype. It is interesting/amazing that someone could make that kind of changed in his life, but it’s only entertaining to that point, simply to know that it happened, otherwise it drags. It is not interesting to let the story play out. It is more interesting as a story that is told and not shown, unlike TOOTSIE.