In 2001, Malawian William Kamkwamba built a windmill to power his family's farm. The 14-year-old's accomplishment helped save his isolated village from a deadly drought, got him into college and earned him world-wide fame. Now, Chiwetel Ejiofor, in his writing/directorial debut, has set out to adapt the incredible true story into a biopic. Working with a main cast of mostly amateur actors, Ejiofor has set himself a compelling challenge. Can he pull it off?
The film covers the tale of the Kamkwamba family as they struggle to survive in Kasungu, Malawi. Their village is alternatively plagued by floods or droughts, they are running short on money and their government actively doesn't care. Throughout the drama happening within the village and his own family, the middle child William (Maxwell Simba) begins developing an idea for a wind turbine that could pump up water from the village well and feed it into an irrigation canal, allowing his family to farm during drought.
However, this plot point, despite being referenced in the title, doesn't come in until the last 25 minutes of the film. The preceding hour and 45 minutes and change before that is focused on portraying just how miserable the Kamkwamba family and the rest of the village are. That's it. The film shares a similar problem with "Alita: Battle Angel" in that the story starts about seven times in the course of an hour and a half. It introduces and arc and just leaves it hanging there for the most part. And when it does get going, there's no progression towards an ultimate goal or even the sense of just watching people go about their lives that "Roma" did. This is mainly because with "Roma," you didn't know it was leading up to anything, so you had no expectations for conventional pacing. "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind," however, promises you an end goal in the title and advertising, so for the first 5/6 of the movie, you're waiting for all of this buildup to pay off to something that doesn't come.
And when the movie does decide to have a plot in the last 25 minutes, it's completely without substance. William doesn't go through an arc or change in any way. It's mostly the father that does that and the only lesson that he learns is "Technological advancement is good." Not the most revelatory life lesson in the world.
And because of this lack of core theme, a lot of the film feels useless. Usually, the suffering a character goes through is used to prepare him for the climax, where all he's learned and experienced is put to use in a satisfying conclusion. However, because there is no main goal which the characters are working towards, the trials and suffering have no purpose. Nobody learns anything through them and it doesn't prepare them for the climax.
To be fair to the film, that approach does actually work. Much of the film, despite its massive pacing defects, is quite engaging. The characters feel very human; even as you can see they love each other, the starvation, heat and the lack of money increases the tension between them in an arc of escalation that feels natural.
As a director, Ejiofor does an excellent job at helping the audience feel the rising tension not just in the village but the country at large. We see trucks of revolutionaries, starving people flocking rise trucks for food and the family's own neighbors stealing from them out of desperation.
He also does well at portraying the rising heat. The colors are convincingly dry, with dead yellows tarnishing the plants and dusty grays for the walls. The first time you see water in the film you feel as though you yourself just took a nice, refreshing gulp.
While all of the actors do well, I can't say that anybody in the cast ever outdid Ejiofor as the father. He has a lot of natural, on-screen charisma and, as I said, his character is the only one that has anything resembling an arc, giving him a chance to show off more range than the others.
The question of whether "The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind" is a good or bad movie is a bit difficult to say. It has major fundamental problems in the pacing issues and the fact that it doesn't have a thematic through line is a problem. However, there are too many moments of genuine engagement that I can't really call it bad. It comes out on March 1st, so I guess you can decide out for yourself whether or not it's worth it at that point.
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