The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is a 2019 drama about a boy in Malawi who helps his village with a project he learns about in a book.
It’s hard to say how most probably know Chiwetel Ejiofor, his impressive collection of performances over the past twenty years dotting all genres and earning fans the world over. Now he steps behind the camera in his feature length directorial debut, offering a small but personal account of a family in eastern Africa struggling to survive, and the curious child who brings hope for the future. It’s an intimate if slightly familiar story with enough heart behind it to lift it above expectations.
It’s late 2001 and a drought has seized the countryside, where young William (Maxwell Simba) lives with his family in a town of farmers. His father is Trywell (Ejiofor), bound to the land left behind by his father, vowing to sustain his family through the worst while others are selling off for cheap sales to lumberjacks looking to harvest the surrounding forests. William is a bright boy but his father can’t afford the rising school fees, especially as his crops face ruin from the floods that come in the fast rains, made so by the lack of trees. As famine grips the land, there is great conflict in what to do, though William might have the solution.
Where Ejiofor finds the most impact is in keeping the story very local, never pulling us out of the urgency of the people’s plight. Trywell represents all farmers clinging to their livelihood and the past, unable to beat nature or the politics that have changed the world around him. With the World Trade Center attacks being mentioned early in a radio broadcast (the boys gathered about switch it to the soccer game with disinterest), we get set in the times and learn that in this small corner of the world, there were things of more importance. It’s an effective little twist on what we’ve come to expect and helps greatly in defining the needs of people well out of reach of the Westernized view we are so often weighted by.
Spoken mostly in Chichewa and bits of English, the story is well paced with the parallels of what the adults are entangled in and the growing knowledge of William, who is absorbing what he can about decisions being made above him while he scavages the local landfill for inspiration in building a device that could make all the difference. There are some harrowing moments in the complications of politics that lead to some troubling developments but are not overplayed in overshadowing William’s story, even if it at times loses some balance, especially as a couple of subplots occasionally distract.
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind is based on a true story, that of the real William Kamkwamba and for what it intends, succeeds, eloquently and often passionately. There are some truly jarring moments that come in the depiction of those on the edge of hopelessness, and nor should any of that be easy to see. However, Ejiofor is careful to never lose sight of William, reminding us that necessity does inspire innovation in the right minds. Recommended.