Three Great Movies to Tag for Holiday Viewing (Part 2)

October 31, 1:53 PMAfrican-American Art ExaminerAberjhani

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Actress Megan Good in "Stomp the Yard." (PR photo release)

If you missed part one, you can find it by clicking here
For part two, please continue reading.

Thuggery and Healing in Tsotsi

Tsotsi (2005) is a movie based on the 1980 novel by Athol Fugard, the South African author most noted for such plays as Blood Knot and Master Harold…and the Boys, which scrutinize the dehumanizing impact of apartheid segregation.  Director Gavin Hood moves the book’s storyline up to modern times and gives his audience a cinematic interpretation filled with the energetic hip hop music known as “kwaito” and the vibrant colors of South African urban life. The end result is a work of hardcore realism and poetic grace that serves as a compelling portrait not only of the extreme challenges facing many in South Africa’s cities but of those facing people in many urban environments throughout the world in 2008.

The name “Tsotsi” is really not a proper name at all but a term describing a street thug or criminal. The specific Tsotsi in the title of this movie (performed with amazing complexity by Presley Chweneyagae) is one who steals a car only to discover later there is a baby inside it. The scenes that follow are often as laugh-out-loud comical as they are heartbreakingly tragic. One can’t help pitying him when Tsotsi uses an old newspaper in his attempt to change the baby’s diaper and then detest him again when he forces a woman named Miriam (acted with convincing sensitivity by Terry Pheto) at gunpoint to breastfeed the child.

Poster for South African film TSOTSI. (PR photo release)

It is, however, through the infant and Miriam that Tsotsi begins to reconnect with a healing sense of his own humanity and to reclaim the innocence lost to him as a child who ran away to escape his mother’s illness and his father’s cruelty. His extraordinary transformation from nightmare hellion to angelic thug unfolds through a series of strange encounters, shocking events, and surprising revelations. The question is whether or not the healing comes too late.

Stomp the Yard

Now a modern classic, Stomp the Yard (2007) follows the life of a troubled young man named DJ, played by Columbus Short, as he moves from the East Coast to the West in an attempt to start life all over again after losing his younger brother Duron––performed by singer Chris Brown in a role that somewhat reflects his current legal challenges–– in a street brawl.

Once he becomes a student at a historically black school called Truth University, DJ initially demonstrates the same kind of arrogance and self-absorption that got him into conflicts back in L.A. But he also discovers the world of stepping, both a new form of dance for him and a cultural tradition going back to the establishment of the first black Greek Letter fraternities and sororities in the early 1900s during the Harlem Renaissance.

He becomes determined to help his chosen fraternity, Theta Nu Theta, end a seven-year long losing streak against their rivals Mu Gamma Xi, and to win the heart of co-ed April Palmer––played beautifully by Megan Good. His efforts take him through inspiring rites of passage during which he learns a great deal about his ancestral legacies and the advantages of sometimes working as part of a team rather than thinking only of himself.


Singer/actor Chris Brown. (AP photo by Matt Sayles)


The culminating dance competitions in Stomp the Yard have to be seen to be believed and rank among the best in cinema history. Ultimately, this film is one that stands alongside You've Been Served, Drumline, and others that accentuate the life-affirming power and beauty of many African-American college traditions. In the process, it confirms and celebrates that same potential in all human beings.

Each of the three movies reviewed in this article acknowledge the agony sometimes dealt by life while reaffirming life’s possibilities for joyful triumph. In a word, although not traditional holiday fare, they entertain with the moving kind of stories and images that give the holidays their deepest meanings.

Please click here for Part 1 of Three Great Movies to Tag for Holiday Viewing

By Aberjhani African American Art Examiner and author/co-author of eight books including Christmas When Music Almost Killed the World and Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance.

 
More Traditional Holiday Movie Fun: 

• Call Me Clause
• It's A Wonderful Life
• Jim Carrey in A Christmas Carol on IMDB
• Last Holiday
• Nothing Like the Holidays
• The Perfect Holiday