The Boy Who
Harnessed the wind
Journey of a 13 year old Malawian boy named William kamkwamba who builts a wind turbine to save his village from famine & drought.
Director:
Chiwetel Ejiofor
Cast:
Maxwell Simba as William Kamkwamba,
Chiwetel Ejiofor as Trywell Kamkwamba – Father of William kamkwamba
Aïssa Maïga as Agnes Kamkwamba – Mother of William Kamkwamba
Genres:
Films Based on Real Life, Biographical Films, Films Based on Books
The Boy Who Harnessed The Wind
“Chiwetel Ejiofor”
Over a couple of months I have been researching online on universities that offer masters in the field of renewable energy engineering and what to expect as a renewable energy engineer when pursued as a career. Renewable energy always fascinated me as it offers.
Clean energy! Green energy!
It was some time during my online research on wind turbines and renewable energy I stumbled upon this amazing movie “The boy who harnessed wind”.
This story is taken from the autobiography of William kamkwamba, a Malawian boy who builts wind turbine to power various appliances and a water pump in his house back in 2001 in a small village named kasungu of malawai.
The core content of this movie lies in the incidents as mentioned below that pushes William Kamkwamba to build the wind turbine.
A major portion of the kasungu village people are farmers, who sell grains cultivated from their lands for a living. But that year rains came late and the quantity of grains cultivated was not as expected. This affected the earnings of lot of village people.
- People are forced to sell their trees of their land to the tobacco company for money. The village chief Wimbe (Joeph Marcell) and trywell tries to negotiate with people not to sell their trees to the company, but many due to fear of not getting proper rain in the coming seasons agrees with what the company has to offer.
- Even Trywell sells some of his household items for money.
- Drought becomes so serious and affects the grain harvest badly. Most villagers flee their village, the people who stayed back started controlling their food intake. At one point William and his family decides to take single meal a day based on the rations they have.
- People even start stealing from others. One day a group of men forces inside William house and steal all of their food.
- Corrupt politicians whom does not care about the conditions of the village people.
All this forced William kamkwambe to find solution for the drought problem they face in their village.
William kamkwamba is a bright student at school who has deep interest in electronics. He always experiments with electrical and electronic gadgets (mostly tries to repair them and succeed).
Here you can see William repairing a radio for his friends.
Due to lack of rain and weather problems, trywell faces financial issues and find it hard move along with his daily life. He is also unable to pay Williams school fees. Due to which William gets expelled from school but he is determined to find a solution to the crisis his entire village face.
William gets an initial spark for making the wind turbine when he see’s the working of the cycle dynamo of his science teacher Mike Kachigunda (Lemogang Tsipa), who is in relation with his sister Annie Kamkwamba. To learn more on how to construct the wind turbine, William needs to use the school library to read books related to it. Since william is expelled from school, mike helps convince the librarian Edith Sikelo to accommodate william in the library on a condition that william shall not say about the relation between mike and annie to trywell. In the school library William reads a book named “Using Energy” and gets to know more about wind turbines.
William collects the materials for the wind turbine and the water pump from a junkyard while scouting with his school friend and son of village Chief Gilbert Wimbe (Philbert Falakeza). William usually collects batteries and other parts from this junkyard for his other repair works as well.
William Kamkwamba’s next task was to convince his father trywell to get his bicycle parts for constructing the actual wind turbine. Even though initially disagrees to the idea, trywell finally comes to an agreement with William. The rest of the movie as you can expect William constructs the wind turbine, which is beautifully portrayed in the movie.
When talking about the lead actor Maxwell Simba who played William Kamkwamba in the movie, he is the perfect person to cast in a role like this. Maxwell’s acting was so natural, which is evident from so many scenes.
This is one of my favorite scenes from the movie, where William Kamkwamba is caught by his school principal when he was in his science class for learning, in actual William was banned from attending any classes in the school since his fees where not paid. (I really felt sad when Maxwell cried in this scene)
The combination scenes between Maxwell and Chiwetel is so emotional and intense that it made me feel as if they were a real son and father. This scene shows William Kamkwamba (Maxwell) trying to convince his father Trywell (Chiwetel Ejiofor) about his idea of using wind turbine to generate electricity and there by using it to run a water pump connected to a well to serve water for the dry farm land even when there is no rain. But Trywell gets angry, throws away the mini model of wind turbine (the one Williams makes) and shouts at William to assist him In his dry farm.
Even the family meal together gives us a feeling of a real family.
William kamkwanbe later on gets scholarships to continue his education based on his achievements. Below is a speech by William kamkwanbe after he became world famous.
Cinematography
There are some beautiful frames captured in this movie that is worth sharing.
The tribes men walking with a beautiful landscape in background
A perfect frame – Extended Branches of Tree focused in foreground with people walking in background
Trywell ploughing the land at sunset – a well composed scene
William kamkwambe mourns over the dead body of his pet dog – A beautiful wide angle frame
Conclusion
When I came to know that this movie was actually based on a real life person named William kamkwamba and the directorial debut of actor Chiwetel Ejiofor (Who acted in movies like Dr. Strange, Martian, 12 years as a slave etc.) I thought of watching it.
There are certain movies whose characters and story remain in our hearts forever and this movie is one such. I felt the director has succeeded in giving the audience a heart-felt emotional epic film. All the actors who were cast in this movie were perfect for their respective roles and director Chiwetel Ejiofor really brought out the best performances from all of them. In general one can say that this movie is heart touching, emotional and so on. But for me personally I felt that this movie also shows the value of education, how education and good reading can really change the lives of people. William kamkwamba is an inspiration to kids of developing countries to take up challenges and to give back something good to their society.
Overall, this film is great in aspects of story, direction and acting. As a first time director, Chiwetel Ejiofor exceeded the expectations. At times this feels like a slow movie, but one that is definitely worth watching and will stick with you emotionally till the end.
Author: Aromal Anil
