Birthpsychology Goes to the Movies

Tsotsi”
Excerpts from a Review by Marcy Axness, Ph.D

Tsotsi is a beautiful film that dramatizes the redemptive nature of parent-child relationships and the transformational power of love. From South Africa Tsotsi won the Academy Award in 2005 for Best Foreign Film. 

Tsotsi is a young and callous street gang leader who--among other crimes--steals a car and discovers a baby in the back seat! He makes a decision to keep it and secretly begins the process of sheltering and caring for it. This stirs in the young man memories of his own painful childhood, and internal movement begins. We witness how the baby touches and transforms his character and behavior--including splitting from the gang and giving up his brutal life of crime. He finds a young nursing mother who will take on the new baby and a process begins where both baby and mother bring him back to life and love. Finally, using his courage in a new way, he endangers himself to meet his obligation to return the baby to the real parents. The archetypal themes of Tsotsi’s transformation and redemption are healing to witness, and the suggestion of a spiritual wealth possible within circumstances of material poverty is particularly compelling, as illustrated exquisitely by the character of a widowed nursing mother. The story portrays how central a child’s early experience is, not just for his own lifelong social/emotional wellbeing, but for the health of society as a whole.  It reminds us that behind their masks of toughness, raging young men most deeply want to “have a conversation about their mother” (as the film’s director Gavin Hood put it.)

When asked to comment on the film’s themes of redemption, forgiveness, and personal responsibility, Hood, who directed many South African street youths, said, “I find when I'm working with these kids that when you strip away the mask, and you're one on one with them, most kids are the same from all over the world: they want to be loved, they want to give love, they want to feel affirmed but when they've been raised without parental support, guidance, call it what you will, and without a social structure that perhaps might substitute for lack of parents, they're pretty much having to make it up themselves. But once you strip away the masks they're wearing, most kids want to be accepted.”
 
In the audience I was sitting with in Los Angeles, people were deeply moved, hushed, and found it difficult to speak after watching this powerful film.