The Boy Who Harnessed (利用) the Wind is an inspirational true-story film based on a memoir—an account of the author’s personal experiences—by the Malawian engineer William Kamkwamba. As a teenager, Kamkwamba built a wind turbine for his famine-stricken town in Malawi, helping to power small appliances and eventually irrigate crops. But though the film points toward that technological breakthrough, it spends much of its running time depicting (描绘) its hero’s community and avoids many of the damaging language that tend to accompany pop-cultural description of poverty or conflicts in African countries.

This approach is what makes the movie, much more attractive than other such docu-dramas. Chiwetel Ejiofor, an English actor, is making his feature appearance as a writer and director to draw attention to Kamkwamba’s story—but he’s just as focused on depicting the boy’s family life and the dangers of farming in early-2000s Malawi. Famine isn’t just a thing that happens to the Kamkwambas. It’s the result of a series of unpredictable catastrophes that trickle down to this small village and leave its people struggling to grow and sell food. By examining the many structural reasons for the town’s crisis, Ejiofor makes Kamkwamba’s achievement feel better-earned from a narrative (叙述的) perspective.

The Kamkwambas are not lacking in food, at first, though they do live harvest to harvest. Soon, a series of dramatic floods, combined with government unrest (动荡), begins to take a toll on (have a bad effect on) their life. Through it all, William shows his gift for invention, taking apart whatever machines he can get his hands on and figuring out how they work. In one crucial (and cleverly written) scene, some local teenagers beg William to fix their radio so that they can listen to a soccer game, and he does, making use of a battery from several drained power cells. As the radio jolts to life, it delivers a news report of planes hitting buildings in the U.S., which serves as the first real acknowledgment of the film’s exact time period. The uninterested teens immediately switch over to the game, but Ejiofor included that detail for a reason. Though Malawi is on the other side of the world from the U.S., and the Kamkwambas’ village is far from the country’s biggest city, the negative effects of 9/11 are felt even there—unsettling the government and setting off a chain reaction that quickly turns things terrible. Moments like these affirm Ejiofor’s particular skill for storytelling. To William and his young friends, the event barely registers, but it still has huge consequences for their lives.

The latter half of the film is tougher going than the light, community-oriented opening, but it’s anchored by strong performances. Trywell, William’s father, isn’t a bad dad, but as his family gets hungrier, his anger toward his government, which was supposed to help him thrive, rises to the surface. As William’s mother, Maïga is a calmer, steadier figure, but her pride is damaged, too. She   speaks of never wanting to be the stereotypical (老套的) family “praying for rain,” as her ancestors did, and despairs as Trywell’s strategy to save the farm becomes almost exactly that.

At a certain point, I started mentally checking my watch—Isn’t it time for the boy to start harnessing the wind? But Ejiofor doesn’t want William’s massive achievement to look easy. Not only does William need to gather the practical materials needed for a windmill in a nearly abandoned town, but he also has to challenge his father’s skepticism and persuade him to give up the few possessions he still has, including a bicycle, to create something that appears impossible. It’s striking, and deeply sad, to consider that superficially (表面上) the only thing keeping William’s town from starvation was basically wind power. In Ejiofor’s hands, The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind builds realism and context into both sides of that story and manages to be a winning adaptation as a result.

Of all the changes that have taken place in English-language newspapers during the past quarter-century, perhaps the most far-reaching one has been the inevitable decline in the scope and seriousness of their arts coverage.

It is difficult to the point of impossibility for the average reader under the age of forty to imagine a time when high-quality arts criticism could be found in most big-city newspapers. Yet a considerable number of the most significant collections of criticism published in the 20th century consisted in large part of newspaper reviews. To read such books today is to marvel at the fact that their learned contents were once considered suitable for publication in general-circulation dailies.

We are even farther removed from the unfocused newspaper reviews published in England between the turn of the 20th century and the eve of World War II, at a time when newsprint was dirt-cheap and stylish arts criticism was considered an ornament (装饰) to the publications in which it appeared. In those far-off days, it was taken for granted that the critics of major papers would write in detail and at length about the events they covered. Theirs was a serious business, and even those reviewers who wore their learning lightly, like George Bernard Shaw and Ernest Newman, could be trusted to know what they were about. These men believed in journalism as a calling, and were proud to be published in the daily press. “So few authors have brains enough or literary gift enough to keep their own end up in journalism,” Newman wrote, “that I am tempted to define ‘journalism’ as ‘a term of contempt applied by writers who are not read to writers who are’.”

Unfortunately, these critics are virtually forgotten. Neville Cardus, who wrote for the Manchester Guardian from 1917 until shortly before his death in 1975, is now known solely as a writer of essays on the game of cricket. During his lifetime, though, he was also one of England’s foremost classical-music critics, a stylist so widely admired that his Autobiography (1947) became a best-seller. He was knighted in 1967, the first music critic to be so honored. Yet only one of his books is now in print, and his vast body of writings on music is unknown save to specialists.

Is there any chance that Cardus’s criticism will enjoy a revival? The prospect seems remote. Journalistic tastes had changed long before his death, and postmodern readers have little use for the richly upholstered Vicwardian prose in which he specialized. Moreover, the amateur tradition in music criticism has been in headlong retreat.

We’ve dug deep to find 4 of the most exciting documentary films coming to a screen near you in 2022.

Last Exit: Space

Last Exit: Space, narrated by Werner Herzog, explores the human potential for settling in space and sending people where they’ve never been before. Since planet Earth is possibly going to hell (地狱) in a handbasket, the film promises to ask the question: where else might we call home? Directed by his son Rudolph Herzog, Last Exit: Space will be available from March 10 on Discovery.

Gorbachev. Heaven

As leader of the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev was once one of the most powerful people on the planet who governed a landmass so big that it covered 11 time zones. Gorbachev’s legacy is a complex one — he oversaw the end of the Cold War but many Russians blame him for the Soviet Union’s collapse. The BBC says this potentially fascinating look at one of the most significant figures from inside his own home will be airing in the very near future.

We Met In Virtual Reality

This film from director Joe Hunting beats fresh ground in that it is filmed entirely in virtual reality. Less about the technology itself, it is more an exploration of human connections and how these can develop in the 3D virtual world. Early reviews have been positive following its showing at Sundance. Expect a streaming release in late May this year.

2nd Chance

Hold your popcorn tightly when watching this. If the trailer (预告片) is anything to go by, there are going to be lots of near-death moments. 2nd Chance from Oscar-nominated director Ramin Bahrani tells the story of Richard Davis, the wild and odd inventor of the modern bullet-proof vest. “All will be revealed as soon as a release date is confirmed.” Ramin Bahrani promised on April 5^th.