Tuesday, November 30, 2010

Tsotsi


The movie Tsotsi takes the audience on a journey into a man’s past and his
Tsotsi Posterliberation from old chains that he is wearing.The main character, known as ‘Tsotsi’, which is the South African term for‘gangster’ or ‘thug’, is played by Presley Chweneyagae. He is the leader of a small gang with three members. They spend their time robbing, stealingand drinking.The story is set in today’s Johannesburg and it takes place at the edge of the city in the heart of Soweto.
There are more than three million people living in the town of Johannesburg; and there are three times more people living in the greater metropolitan area. That means that ‘Jozi’ belongs to the largest metropolitan areas in the world and has one of the highest crime rates in the world.Especially in areas like these the differences between poor and rich are as large as between day and night and the viewer is brought deep into the poor shantytowns of Soweto.
This is the context in which the story takes place. Originally it was written in the 1960s by Athol Fugard and set in the 1950s, where the apartheid regime started to take over.And now, four decades later, Gavin Hood, the director of the movie tells the story again, but under different aspects. Hood has updated Fugard’s book from the apartheid era to a present day in which class has replaced race as the country’s most pressing issue, the township and townhouse are in jarring proximity and HIV-Aids is the country’s biggest killer. In the sense it will be used below says that the protagonist of a film needs to build up an identity in order to be accepted by an audience. As it was already mentioned in the previous part it is not so easy for filmmakers to present a brutal gangster as the hero of their movie who should be accepted by the audience. Exactly here lies the art of filmmaking; namely to develop such a film-language that this is nevertheless possible.Whereas in real life most people would not be pleased to make contact with a person who makes his money with killing and robbing other people, in this film the situation is different. Gavin Hood manages it to present such a gangster and to provide the audience with information that have the effect that the viewer can understand the tsotsi’s behaviour and even tolerate the person (not the behaviour!). Tsotsi is a strong movie with an interesting story. The movie carries a certain authenticity as well as intimacy. This mixture makes it a special film which deserved the Oscar in 2005.The comparison of the pictures of the poor shantytowns and the richsuburbs is very impressive and transports the state disequilibrium very well. Also the idea to use the language, the people and the music of the shantytowns makes this movie so special. It is in fact this mirroring of everyday life that makes this film a lively and up to date piece of work.Especially the end of the movie is very successful because it leaves room for discussion about what happened and what can happen in the future. It leaves a certain hope that things can change to their better side.

The Unknown Woman


 
La Sconosciuta, (The Unknown), (The Other Woman)The Unknown Woman .The Italian director Giuseppe Tornatore is best known for sweet, touching art house friendly movies that send people away feeling gooey and cuddly. It's awfully tough to be a human being and resist his delightful Oscar winning hit Cinema Paradiso.
Kseniya Rappoport plays a woman called Irena, who comes to Italy from the Ukraine looking for work. By paying a concierge part of her salary, she gets a job cleaning an affluent apartment building. She befriends Gina a nanny for an upper-crust couple, Valeria  and Donato Adacher and their daughter Thea .Irena deliberately trips Gina on the long stairwell and takes over Gina's job. She tries to win over Thea while casing the apartment, looking for access to the family safe. Very often, Irena suffers uncomfortable flashbacks to her terrible past, serving a pimp-like thug called "Mold" and attempting to break away from him when she falls in love with one of her johns. Tornatore reveals more and more details as the film goes on. In one flashback Irena digs through the filth in a city dump. What's she looking for? I had a guess, but I was wrong.
Tornatore begins his film with what looks like an outtake from Eyes Wide Shut, with masked, naked women posing for some unseen voyeur. After several candidates are surveyed, Irena is chosen, which is presumably the beginning of all her trouble. Critics who saw only the Miramax-ed Malena accused Tornatore of ogling beautiful women with no other purpose in mind, and this opening shot may bring up the same accusations again. But here, as with Malena, the focus remains on the women, not on the voyeurs. We follow the masked Irena out of the scene and watch her as she removes her mask, her eyes defiant and determined. In the flashbacks, she is a dirty blonde, very often victimized, pleading, submitted to rape and other forms of torture. The new Irena, 32, with a mound of tightly curled black hair, is not so easy to catch off guard. She was once beautiful, but her face has now weathered through pain and hard-earned wisdom.The Unknown Woman
 The Italy we see here is covered with graffiti and no place appears to be safe or comfortable. Irena's apartment is ransacked (someone is looking for money) and left in a complete shambles throughout the film. Tornatore shoots low so that we can see the ceiling boards torn asunder. In another scene, a driving lesson occurs at night, with large numbers of pedestrians walking around the car in the half-light, while poor Irena suffers jarring flashbacks while trying to keep her eyes on the road. Tornatore's camera is constantly pacing and roaming, as if filled with pent-up energy and finding no place to spend it. Miraculously, he avoids the typical hand-held, shaky approach, which, these days, is used to signify chaos. Editor Massimo Quaglia keeps up with this restlessness perfectly, never disrupting it or breaking the flow, and legendary composer Ennio Morricone provides another effective, unobtrusive score.
  •    Even Irena's relationship with little Thea is fraught with disaster. Thea suffers from a condition that prevents her from protecting herself when she falls; the natural reflex to put out her hands is missing. So Thea's every move comes with a dreadful anticipation and more than once she turns up bloodied and crying. Irena tries to train her by binding her hands, pushing her down on pillows and forcing her to get up again. How this was supposed to work I have no idea, and indeed, there is more than one logic-challenged scene in the movie, but like the violent crime ("giallo") films of his countrymen Dario Argento and Mario Bava, Tornatore's The Unknown Woman gets by on sheer guts and style.