"Does anyone agree that this film is horribly overated? I cant belive it won best foreign film Oscar and others. Essentially the films o.k, its a great story with an on par performance from Presley Chweneyagae, while the soundtrack is probably the best thing about it. But my gosh it feels like it was filmed by students, the editing is sluggish, which creates an aggrivating pace to the entire film. The camera work is boaring, in parts its cheasy, the direction is tame, and the majority of the dialaogue is stale, e.g ''he went out to work one day... and never came back'', come on guys this is childs play. I think the post-production team may have let the side down a little, the sound recordist has just failed in my opinion, notice the dogs bark, broken glass, gun shots, foot steps, all recorded at strange levels. As i mentioned before the film is cut to an 'epic' pace - yet few of the performaces are able to hold the extended time on screen. Obvioulsy many will disagree, but if you watch again look out for these issues i've mentioned. I just wanna say i dont have a huge problem with the film, i even kind of enjoyed it, my problem is with the fact that a film which is technically floored, should not win oscars."
As other posters have mentioned the technical ‘flaws’ are probably in some way a reflection of the funds Think about it –there’s really nothing too expensive in relation to filmmaking. They use real locations. A car crashes but there’s very little damage done to it in reality (later a light is smashed – quite easy to fix). There’s a bit of makeup in terms of fake blood and bruising – but not much. There’s no Hollywood A-list actors. Nothing in the film implies expensive. And yet that seems ideal to me. There’s nothing fancy to distract the eye. The seemingly imperfect production quality mirrors in some way the very gritty, tough life of the main characters involved. Admittedly they could’ve taken that sort of amateurish feel to the film to another level by using more handheld shots to give a wilder feel to the film. But it didn’t really strike me as poorly shot – it seemed to follow naturally if very simply (not particularly innovative, though it’s getting harder to be original) but it served its purpose.
As for the dialogue, it may seem stilted and poorly written, but I think that it was a deliberate decision. The characters involved, in general, are poorly educated (as mentioned more than once) – many don’t even know what the word ‘decency’ means. To have complicated sentences or philosophical words come out of their mouths would seem a little out of place.
"As i mentioned before the film is cut to an 'epic' pace - yet few of the performances are able to hold the extended time on screen."
I agree with you on the ‘epic’ aspect. It tried to be epic but it didn’t actually have an epic length. It felt longer than it was because certain aspects were stretched out (will he ever cop on and give back that baby?). It seemed like the filmmakers were trying to make that standard 90 minutes for it to qualify as ‘feature-length’. It’s true that it could’ve been a bit longer. But time and money were probably against them. All the key elements were in the film in a nutshell. I for one couldn’t say that the main character was underdeveloped – I’ve films twice as long where character development and some explanation for their actions isn’t tackled as well as it is in this film.
“…my problem is with the fact that a film which is technically floored, should not win oscars.”
I’ve come across many IMDb posters complaining about Oscar wins. People forget that the Oscars are fused with a certain type of politics. The most deserved one doesn’t always win – after all, the votes are cast by people and their opinions are subjective and often biased. In fact, in the case of a foreign language film, sometimes the ‘best’ one isn’t even put forward for nomination. In the case of Tsotsi was probably the safest option – the other nominations included an Italian film about a troubled woman (not political enough), a WWII film about a temporary cease fire (there are so many WWII films), a film about a couple of Palestinian suicide bombers (suicide bombing = probably too sensitive an issue for America) and another WWII film (again, why vote for another film set during the holocaust?). Some of my favourite films never received a single Oscar, and some films that I didn’t enjoy one bit were showered with them. They’re nice to have, I’m sure, but they’re not the be all and end all of filmmaking.
Hector Barbossa; now that's a pirate!
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