Foreign Film Musings
I have always enjoyed documentaries. I find them so fascinating. Movies based on true stories always get me, too. Recently, I have become very interested in foreign films. Not the brooding, dark French kind of foreign films with surreal images flashed across the screen, where everyone talks in what appears to be code, wears trench coats, smokes and it’s all in black and white.
Rather, I have been looking through the “best foreign films” categories on the internet, including on Netflix, and have rented two that have made me realize a couple of things.
The first was Water. A Hindu film about a seven year old widow…yes, widow that must follow Hindu tradition and go live in a widow’s home for the rest of her life in 1938 India. It was a fabulous film. The second was Tsotsi (which means “thug” in Afrikaan/South African language). This film was incredible.
I asked my husband and two sons if they wanted to watch with me. I got the blank – don’t want to hurt your feelings but I would rather be tied to a red ant hill - look.
All three used the default – I don’t like to read my movies.
Egads!
Before but especially after, I realized how narrow this view is.
If it isn’t from an English speaking country it isn’t worthy.
I can’t stand that attitude.
You miss so much.
Seeing India from the Hindu perspective, and seeing South Africa from this boy Tsotsi’s perspective was indescribable. It’s one thing to see the world through the American or British or even Canadian perspective, but I really feel I see enough of that already. Seeing other countries, other religions, other societies’ points of view is amazing.
Tsotsi, or David, is a punk.
Living in a township with his three friends, he is a kid (I’d say he was late teens, early twenties – maybe) that initially appears to be a thug. As most of the characters initially seem to be, very stereotypical in their actions and their behaviors. But the beauty of this film is that it goes so much further. I came away reinforced in my belief that there is a fraction of a fraction of people who are born “bad”, but those that grow up and end up on the wrong side of right are products of their environment, of their experiences. Initially, David appears to be heartless. He can rob and steal, beat up or shoot people without any kind of blip on his emotional or integrity radar. Until he carjacks a woman (which is also very revealing because the people that he and his group “jack” are all black – the only white guy is some innocuous cop). He gets in the car (even though he can’t drive), she tries to stop him and he shoots her. He drives for a while and hits a sign, when he realizes there is a newborn in the back seat. Grappling with the reinforced armored walls he has put up over the years, you are literally able to see, through the expressions and the actions of this actor/character, the peeling back of this protection to see a damaged little boy. A little boy whose mother died of AIDs, a drunken father who broke the back of his beloved dog, who abandoned him when he was no more than ten. He lived in concrete pipe on the outskirts of the township. Never went to school. Obviously had to toughen up to survive alone. Decency constantly rears it’s head and you come to realize that decency resides in all of us. We are all capable of so much, yet our lives are so very influenced by those charged with our care. AIDs is an epidemic in Africa, absolutely, but the epidemic of bad or inadequate parenting is worldwide. As is our ease in jumping to conclusions and stereotyping complete strangers. We think we are so clever when we stuff people into categories when given the slightest bit of information about them. Boiling information away to get to the lowest common denominator. Good/bad, right/wrong, black/white. There is so much grey. There is so much more to people than the behaviors they exhibit from a lifetime of programming. We are so hard on kids when we know so little about them. Jumping to conclusions because of one or two actions that might indeed be hard to understand or fully grasp. I fully comprehend the sentiment of justice. I am a firm believer in seeing justice being served. But I get beyond angry, beyond indignant when I see no compassion. Especially in the juvenile arena. Most kids coming into juvy are damaged or broken. Clamping down, not caring about that individual child does nothing to repair that child. Why are kids tried as adults? Because of their crimes? Does that make any sense? Surely that wasn’t the first infraction. It seems we are so busy putting out fires that we don’t see that there are many parents setting them. Parents that simply do not have the skills to parent. It is not something that is innate. It is a skill that some have the good fortune to experience first hand through their own parents.
But what about those that don’t? What about those kids that don’t have positive role models? Let’s not forget that the most powerful role model for a child is the same sex parent, the most powerful relationship model is the opposite sex parent. What if you don’t have a safe place to fall? What is it like to constantly be “on alert” from the time you are born? What is it like to leave the house and come back not knowing what the climate might be? Hostile or aggressive? What does it do to the foundation of a child to live in a perpetual state of fear and dread? How do you possibly come out well adjusted? How is that even feasible? What about kids of war? Can you even imagine seeing someone killed…neighbors maimed…people you know wounded in the most graphic sense? Seeing the city or town that you know being decimated, blowing to smithereens on a regular basis? What kind of stage does that set for a child’s journey into adulthood? Unless you are insane, there are always reasons/excuses for the things you do. When you speed, when you cut in line, when you don’t tell the cashier that she made a mistake, when you don’t tell the truth. And there are clear lines of right and wrong. When is the line crossed when you have been given nothing, when you have had to fight for everything, when you have had to be heightened alert all your life, when you are uneducated and literally abandoned by the society that you are a part of, when is the line crossed into inexcusable? When you have never been shown or told how to control your frustration, your angst, your hurt, how do you control it? It seems so odd to me that we expect young people with no frame of reference to know how to behave. I am, of course, not talking about those that have been nurtured, educated, valued, those that are on some kind of thrill seeking mission. I am talking about kids like David. Kids that “fall through the cracks”. To have no value placed on you is to place no value on anything. When no one worries where you are, when no one is around to explain other people’s actions or events, you are left to figure it out yourself. Living in a desperate place, with desperate people can only lead to one thing.
Desperation.
Seems so logical.
But the problem is, we have people that see things only through their own experiences. People who cannot be bothered with the details, with the individual. They prefer to lump it all together and look at the synopsis. These are Cliffnote people. The kind of people that just couldn’t be bothered.
They have their own lives, their own troubles, their own concerns. They’ve had hardships – they got through’em.
But that’s a problem in a society.
We are not all little islands.
We interact.
We depend on one another.
I depend on my neighbors to not destroy my property, to not hurt my kids or my pets.
I depend on other drivers to stay in their lanes and stop at red lights.
I depend on people not to punch me in the face as they pass me in the mall.
I depend on others.
We all do.
So if we all depend on others, why do we not care about other’s hardships?
The way I see it, if everyone has the bare essentials – shelter, clothing, food and healthcare – then we are doing pretty good. If I see someone that is struggling, do I reach out and help or do I lock my doors, stare straight ahead and accelerate? I have to say, it physically wounds me to see others struggling. I cannot stand it. I can’t walk by. I am not out for some Samaritan award, I am doing it for me – to ease the distress I feel when I encounter someone having a hard time. I cannot walk past a homeless person without acknowledging their existence. I can’t help but stop and roll down my window to see if that person needs my cell phone to call about that flat…or that engine trouble. I don’t always hand out money, but a lot of the time I dig for change. Does that make me a sucker? Enabling these “takers” in the world? Guess so. I don’t really care. I have lived among the desperate. They all have a story. You will find vultures circling amongst them, but for the most part, they are all wounded. They have all had some life altering experience happen at a young age that changed their destiny, and had someone recognized that at the time and thrown out the life preserver, that individual would have had a better chance. But as it stands we have a lot of kids out there that are terrifically wounded, bleeding out, and having to carry this gaping lesion through the rest of their lives. If you saw a kid with a cavernous injury would you just walk by? Would you offer to take him to the hospital? We walk by people everyday that have huge psychological injuries that remain unattended. Some might figure out a way to patch it up, some might even be so brave as to find a way to sew it back together. But the majority just need some help from others – a random act of kindness, a handout or hand up – to feel that their life might actually be worth the effort.
Seeing this film from the perspective of a South African about a situation in South Africa was an opportunity to see another perspective. In the Constant Gardener (which I really liked) it was a British perspective about Africa, regarding the west’s heinous actions against a third world country. It’s so easy to take advantage of those less fortunate. It’s so simple to play upon those that are desperate. I guess that’s where faith is supposed to come in. Whatever your faith is, I think the underlying theme for most faiths, for most religions is to love. To offer kindness. To empathize. To work for the betterment of others, which in turn, is to the benefit of yourself. I see this kid, David, not having the vaguest idea how to care for this infant, and I think how sad that he has no one to show him. He had nothing in experiences to fall back on. But the drive to care for this baby is truly moving, and life altering. David transforms. Kind of like the Grinch with the expanding heart. His eyes change. His face changes. The hardness melts away to show a boy that is so capable, even with no experience, of giving and feeling love. And kindness.
Thoughts like this always get slapped down as bleeding heart. Soft on crime. Weak. I think it is easy to resort to primal ways. It’s easy to strike out at something that makes you mad, pisses you off. That is a knee-jerk, primitive response that we all have. The hard part is delving. Delving into why people do what they do. Only then can we understand and try to figure out ways to intercede and change the course of a life spinning out of control. Don’t most of the interventions work? Have you seen that show? Intervention? Arrests don’t work. Fines don’t work. Being surrounded by people that care, that offer help – firmly – that is usually what turns these guys around. Not all, but most.
We as a society need to shake off this bad-ass, take no prisoners attitude. Running around telling everyone that you are on the side of good while doing a lot of bad things just make you look like a delusional liar. My mom used to say that you never have to say how great you are; your actions will prove that. You don’t have to brag about what a great soccer player, smart person, kind person you are – it will be reflected in your actions. I firmly believe that. My husband told me when I first met him that he is a “really nice guy” – it made me grimace. I told him that he couldn’t possibly be if he had to tell me. No wonder he fell in love with me, such a darling. But it’s true. We try to convince people of things that our actions counter. You cannot say that you are a compassionate person if you do unfeeling things. You cannot say you are a genius and do really stupid stuff. You cannot say you are a great soccer player and not be able to play the game. Actions are the real reflection of people. And if those actions are deviant, then there is something going on. What in this person’s frame of reference is making this justifiable? It was easy to look at David, at his friends, and see immediately see losers. It wasn’t until we were privy to the whole story that we could see him as damaged, thus making his transformation that much more inspirational. Through an extraordinary event, he was able to break through all the pain in his past and come to realize who he was capable of being, who he wanted to be. Accepting the consequences of his actions was the first step into realm of "civilized" society. Being a fictional film, he was able to do it himself.
The reality is that most people need others to help them make that kind of transformation.