Tsotsi

 

Last night I finally got to see the Academy Award winning film, Tsotsi.  Don’t worry.  I won’t be turning my blog site into a movie review site. That said, I was absolutely amazed by the film and felt compelled to write about it.  The acting, writing, and gritty visuals it provided was extraordinary and hard to watch at times.  But the overarching theme of a personal journey into humanity balances it’s harshness. 

Tsotsi is a political film in the sense that it takes place in the slums of Johannesburg and shows the horrific legacy of apartheid.  The conditions that Black South Africans continue to live in today are deplorable: lack of healthcare, education, nutrition, and clean water, the blight of HIV/AIDS, poverty, and violence in the townships.  Tsotsi, the main character, is a thug trying to get by and deeply haunted by his upbringing, which was violent, poverty-stricken, and compounded by the loss of his mother.  More importantly, Tsotsi is an intimate portrayal of loss, redemption and the end of violence.  It proffers many questions: When do we end the violence?  When do we make a personal choice to not respond violently? How do we reconcile anger and open up to compassion?  When do we feel accountable to our own behavior and responsible to each other? 

As we look around us and see all of the suffering, it’s hard not to ask, when do we end the violence?  Did getting Saddam Hussein and killing thousands of innocent Iraqi’s and soldiers end the violence of the Taliban?  Will invading Iran and killing more people really end oppression in that country and stabilize the region?  It seems impossible to not answer violence with violence.  Yet, Tsotsi shows that it is possible.  Many activists show this is possible. 

Well, this has been a rather contemplative posting.  I’ll end it with a poem by Zen Monk, Thich Nhat Hanh.  And remember to please enjoy this beautiful day.

Please Call Me By My True Names
by Thich Nhat Hanh

Don't say that I will depart tomorrow-
even today I am still arriving.Look deeply: every second I am arriving
to be a bud on a Spring branch,
to be a tiny bird, with still-fragile wings,
learning to sing in my new nest,
to be a caterpillar in the heart of a flower,
to be a jewel hiding itself in a stone.I still arrive, in order to laugh and to cry,
to fear and to hope.The rhythm of my heart is the birth and death
of all that is alive.I am a mayfly metamorphosing
on the surface of the river.

And I am the bird
that swoops down to swallow the mayfly.
I am a frog swimming happily
in the clear water of a pond.

And I am the grass-snake
that silently feeds itself on the frog.
I am the child in Uganda, all skin and bones,
my legs as thin a bamboo sticks.

And I am the arms merchant,
selling deadly weapons to Uganda.
I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.

And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving.

My joy is like Spring, so warm
it makes flowers bloom all over the Earth.
My pain is like a river of tears,
so vast it fills the four oceans.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can hear all my cries and laughter at once,
so I can see that my joy and pain are one.

Please call me by my true names,
so I can wake up
and the door of my heart
could be left open,
the door of compassion.

Thich Nhat Hanh is a Vietnamese monk in the Zen tradition, who worked tirelessly for peace during the Vietnam War, rebuilding villages destroyed by the hostilities. Following an anti-war lecture tour in the United States, he was not allowed back in his country and settled in France. In 1967, he was nominated by the Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr., for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is now internationally known for his teaching and writing on mindfulness, and for his work related to "socially engaged Buddhism," a call to social action based on Buddhist principles.