By Emery Snyder @leeroy711
Director: Chiwetel Ejiofor
Starring: Maxwell Simba, Chiwetel Ejiofor, Lily Banda & Aissa
Maiga
Netflix Original – March 1, 2019
A small tribal village in Malawi is facing a “hunger season”
due to a combination of flooding as well as a lack of foreign aid and an
economic structure that devalues the crops of the farmers. William Kamkwamba, a
local child engineering prodigy helps them build a wind turbine to power an
electric well pump after reading about it in his school library, enabling their
survival. This film is based on his true
story.
This is Ejiofor’s feature directorial debut, but it doesn’t
show. The film was made with the steady and competent hand of a more
experienced filmmaker. Of course, with 50 acting credits to his name, it’s not
as if he’s a stranger to the medium. He’s worked with accomplished directors
like Spike Lee, Stephen Frears, Steve McQueen and Alfonso Cuarón and I’m sure
that his experience with technical craftsmen like that helped.
What we are given here is a fairly ‘paint-by-numbers’ plot
with the technical flourishes to elevate it a bit above par as well as some
nice subtext to chew on. To be clear, the plot’s predictability does nothing to
lose points. It’s based on a true story and the title essentially gives away
the film’s triumphant ending. We’re here for the journey, not the destination.
The screenplay, adapted by Ejiofor hits the cinematic beats we have all grown
accustomed to for the past century. But again, I’m not knocking it for this,
familiarity is not always a bad thing. It is a compelling and inspiring story
and I’m glad that it’s being told through film. Frequent Mike Leigh collaborator,
Dick Pope provided the beautiful sweeping cinematography. The film is shot wide
and does a great job of capturing the isolation and vastness of the region.
The subtext that Ejiofor used this film to elude to is what
I found to be of particular note. What we are watching is a region that is
caught in between two worlds. William is struggling to gain an education he can’t
afford that would lift him up above his station. The full knowledge that this
education would not only benefit him personally but also his village as well as
the entire country does nothing to change the immediate fact that his able body
is needed to toil in the fields. School is a luxury for those not currently
facing starvation.
The country is seen as struggling to transition towards some
form of democracy. But these early stages only pay lip service to the concepts
of free expression and equality. And when bottom-line capitalism, meant to promote
individual liberties quickly devolve into the cut-throat economics of
desperation, the constituents begin to wonder what good the democratic process
is at all.
William’s parents as well as the village elders are stuck in
a similar struggle as they try to find the balance between their ancestral
traditions and the modernization of the rapidly encroaching Western World. Trywell
(Ejiofor) and Agnes (Maiga) lament that they always identified themselves as ‘modernists’
and that they had promised themselves that they would never ‘pray for rain.’ At
the same time, they actively work to block the progress of their own children, dismissing
William’s invention as ‘a toy’, blind to its potential. I found this to be the
most prescient and interesting allegory of the film. Progressiveness is more
than just abandoning the values and traditions held by previous generations. It
also requires the embrace and acceptance that future generations will do the
same to you. True progress will always need the rejuvenation of youth. This
film, above all is a hopeful look at how this can and does work and I
appreciate it for that.
Emery’s Rating
3.5 out of 5 Stars
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