Gavin hood

Tsotsi and A Reasonable Man
Tsotsi and A Reasonable Man are Gavin Hood's films. I saw them when they first came out, A Reasonable Man a few years before Tsotsi, and seeing them again recently (March 2008) on television prompted this review. The two films deal with a similar theme, a boy/young man and his crime against a baby. In A Reasonable Man, Sipho, a young herdboy, kills a toddler in the mistaken belief that the baby that he cannot see under the blanket is a tikolosh, an evil spirit. In Tsotsi, a young hoodlum inadvertently abducts a tiny baby. In both films, the story unfolds around the boy/young man and the baby.
In A Reasonable Man, Sipho is put on trial for splitting open a baby's head with an axe. Later it is discovered that the baby's genitals have been removed. Because all of this has happened in an African village, the prosecution jumps to the conclusion that this is a muti murder and, therefore, savage and inhuman. Sipho, who does not deny the murder and feels justified in having committed the deed, is distressed, angry and cannot understand his mother's horror and rejection of him. The boy's extraordinary reaction disturbs the young lawyer who happened to be present when the crime was discovered. As he cannot believe that Sipho is capable of wilful murder, he undertakes to defend him and goes back to the village to gather evidence. He sees the chief and visits a sangoma. By immersing himself in the life and beliefs of the villagers, he is able to put the deed back into its context and discovers that Sipho killed what he thought was a tikolosh (an evil spirit) under a blanket. Had he seen the baby, he never would have struck.
In abstracting the killing from its context, the prosecution changed its nature and turned it into a wilful, heinous crime, a muti murder. The assumption that this is a muti murder is facile, simplifies the case for the prosecution, turns it into a clear-cut case that contravenes the fundamental law, ‘Thou shalt not