風をつかまえた少年
あらすじ
2010年に出版されたノンフィクションを、俳優のキウェテル・イジョフォーが初監督作品として映画化。貧しいアフリカの国・マラウイ。大干ばつで学費が払えなくなり、中学校を退学した14歳のウィリアムは、独学で風車を使った自家発電を思いつくが……。出演は、オーディションで抜擢された演技初体験のマックスウェル・シンバ、「ムード・インディゴ うたかたの日々」のアイサ・マイガ。
2010年に出版されたノンフィクションを、俳優のキウェテル・イジョフォーが初監督作品として映画化。貧しいアフリカの国・マラウイ。大干ばつで学費が払えなくなり、中学校を退学した14歳のウィリアムは、独学で風車を使った自家発電を思いつくが……。出演は、オーディションで抜擢された演技初体験のマックスウェル・シンバ、「ムード・インディゴ うたかたの日々」のアイサ・マイガ。
FindKeyのエディトリアルチームがこの作品の深層や歴史を解説しています。
監督: キウェテル・イジョフォー
脚本: William Kamkwamba / Bryan Mealer / キウェテル・イジョフォー
音楽: アントニオ・ピント
制作: アンドレア・カルダーウッド / ゲイル・イーガン / Compton Ross
撮影監督: Dick Pope
制作会社: Participant / BBC Film / BFI / Potboiler Productions
This is a great looking film depicting the abject poverty, despite their best efforts, of a subsistence farming community in Malawi. The cinematography is glorious as we follow the Kamkwamba family's struggles to educate their children and feed themselves at the same time - in the face of some pretty brutal government corruption and a severe drought. Son "William" (Maxwell Simba) is thirteen, and he has more than an average degree of nouse to him - he concludes, after studying a few engineering books in his school's library - that by cannibalising an old bike and an old ghetto-blaster, he can create a turbine mechanism that could be used to generate electrical power to pump water and help them to improve their harvest, and their lives... Chiwitel Ejiofor is his rather sceptical father, struggling under the pressures of keeping his family alive and the two have quite a forceful battle of wills as the young man attempts to convince his father that sacrificing the family's only mode of transport is a risk worth taking! I found the establishing parts of the story a bit too slow; once I understood the extent of their predicament and what the young man was trying to do, I was itching for him to succeed - and the behaviour of the father I found irritating and incongruous, slightly, with a man so keen on educating his family. That said, once it starts to focus on the project, I was astonished by the ingenuity of "William" and his young student friends as they materially change the lives of their famines for ever. It's a good film this - a try triumph of optimism over experience that I largely enjoyed watching.
