The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind (2019)

I wanted something different from my usual viewings, and I found it. It's rare enough to have movies set in Africa; it's rarer still that their protagonist is a Black African. This one doesn't even have any White characters to my recollection.

In the early 2000s, Wimbe, a Malawi village, is devastated by flood and then drought. The Kamkwamba family, headed by father Trywell (Chiwetel Ejiofor, who also wrote and directed for the first time), will have trouble farming enough food to get by, especially when neighbors resort to theft. They also can't afford the fee to keep 13-year-old William (Maxwell Simba) in school. But by sneaking into the school library, William learns enough to assemble a wind turbine, using a bicycle part among others, to meet both water and energy needs -- if only he can persuade Trywell and others to have faith and help him.

If you're like me, you know very little about Malawi and rarely even think of it, tho I had heard of William's project from Wallace and Gromit's World of Invention. I now see that Malawi is extra poor even by African standards, and Wimbe may be especially so, with people leaving whenever they can. We get some hint of a reason in this movie: government corruption. When Netflix warns about "gore," it's talking about a particular moment of guards beating a dissenting older chief (Joseph Marcell).

As befits a film based on a true story, many details, including several Kamkwamba family members, are unimportant to the plot. Only older sister Annie (Lily Banda) gets a slight subplot, by entering a controversial relationship with a teacher (Lemogang Tsipa). I suspect that the biggest liberty taken is with the timeline: The real William had his first success at age 13, which would be no later than August 2001, yet the economy appears to be affected by 9/11. The one error recognized by IMDb is that the baby never matures.

Anyhow, yeah, the title gives away the ending. The rest of the 113 minutes serves to either build slowly toward it or demonstrate how important the achievement will be. I figure the filmmakers didn't think they had a brilliant story, just one worth telling for the sake of awareness.

I'm glad TBWHtW exists, just as I'm glad William reduced famine. It's just not the kind of picture you watch for fun or extensive education. At its best, it inspires hope.