I had heard the title of the film at some point, I didn't know anything about it previously, but I became interested when I heard it was the writing and directorial debut of actor Chiwetel Ejiofor. Basically, in Kasungu, Malawi, William Kamkwamba (introducing Maxwell Simba) is a young schoolboy who comes from a family of farmers who live in the nearby village of Wimbe. William has a talent for fixing radios for his friends and neighbours and spends his free time looking for salvageable electronic components in the local junkyard. Due to his parents being unable to pay his tuition fees, he is soon banned from attending school. William blackmails his science teacher (who is in a secret relationship with William's sister) into letting him continue attending his class and have access to the school's library. He starts reading a book called Using Energy and learns about electrical engineering and energy production. The village is hit by drought, causing the family's crops to fail, the resulting famine and devastation leads to riots over government rationing. William's family is also robbed of their already meagre grain stores. Soon people start abandoning the village, and William's sister marries his former teacher to leave her family with "one less mouth to feed". Seeking to save his village from the drought, William devises a plan to build a windmill, starting with a successful prototype. But to build a bigger windmill, William requires his father, Trywell (Chiwetel Ejiofor), to allow him to dismantle the family bicycle for parts, the only bicycle in the entire village and the family's last major asset. His father believes the plan to be futile and destroys the prototype, forcing William to toil in the fields. After William's dog dies of starvation and hope seems lost, William's mother, Agnes (Aïssa Maïga), intervenes and urges Trywell to reconsider. William and his father reconcile after William buries his dog. With the help of his friends and the few remaining members of the village, they build a full-size wind turbine, using blue gum trees and the dismantled bicycle. The windmill is successful, with the wind rotating the blades and bringing much needed water from the well and spreading it down constructed tubes to water the seeds and grow crops. In the end, the village are saved from starvation, and word of William's windmill spreads. He is awarded a scholarship to attend school, ultimately receiving a degree from Dartmouth College. Since then, William Kamkwamba has built a solar-powered water pump that supplies the first drinking water in his village and two other wind turbines. Also starring Lily Banda as Annie Kamkwamba, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air's Joseph Marcell as Chief Wimbe, and Noma Dumezweni as Edith Sikelo. Newcomer Simba carries the film with his convicted performance as the boy who overcame school expulsion and parental mistrust to create a crop-saving wind turbine, and there is good support from Ejiofor as the strict father. The location filming and dialogue in Chichewa add to the authenticity, it has terrific cinematography and a good gentle score by Antonio Pinto, it is a refreshingly unpatronizing view of the challenges facing communities in 21st-century Africa and about the importance of education, a worthwhile drama based on a true story. Very good!
Review of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind
