A Review of Avildsen's Movie The Power of One

The Power of One, directed by John G. Avildsen, is a controversial film about apartheid in South Africa. The movie explores racial and political barriers that drown the country through the eyes of an English boy named PK. We meet PK during his birth and leave him at the end of the movie a man who has endured a life of pain, loss, and triumph.

The movie is powerful in the sense that there are many scenes that made me cringe. One in particular is a scene where PK is a young boy at boarding school and has been ostracized for his English background. His fellow students all gather in a room and hang PK's pet chicken, his best friend, with a rope from the beams of the ceiling. In front of PK they chant as one boy in particular kills the chicken. In PK's rage he pushes the boy and he falls back and onto something sharp and is laughed at by the other boys. In retaliation he orders the other boys to hang PK from the ceiling as they did his chicken. All the boys started to chant "kill him!" and PK is tortured. They probably would have killed him if a teacher had not walked in the room and stopped it. It was hard to watch this scene, because it is so graphic. I suppose it was necessary though to show the hardships that PK had to endure growing up.

Another hard scene to watch because of its violent content was when PK's boxing teacher, played by Morgan Freeman, is savagely murdered by a guard from the prison in which he is locked up. It is a senseless killing of a kind and generous man, for no other reason than he is black. In the moments before his death, PK is leading a concert in which all the tribes of the prison are united as one and singing in harmony. This is his moment of freedom and he does not care about anything else when he hears this. He truly believes that PK is "The Rainmaker."

As a young man PK falls in love with the daughter of a city official who disapproves of her being with an English boy. And, of course, she too dies a brutal death, as does everyone that PK comes to love in the movie. I thought the movie went a bit far with that. I suppose it is all just to make the audience feel for PK and want him to succeed in his journey to liberate South Africa of apartheid. PK sort of unknowingly takes on the role of the hero, and begins to be worshiped by the black community as the Rainmaker. He and his friends realize that education is the key to liberation and they begin to teach a select few black people to read and write. In the end of the movie we see that these select few are passing their knowledge on to the others and teaching the tribe just as PK taught them. This scene shows how ignorance is what keeps people down, and education is how people can rise out of oppression. Education brings opportunities that were made unavailable to black people by the white South Africans.

PK has been looked down upon and treated with disrespect his entire life because of the actions of his ancestors. He himself did nothing to these people, but because of their racism they used him as a scapegoat for the problems they believed the English brought to their country. This movie shows that one person can make a big difference in the long run, and that it just takes dedication to a cause to make it a reality. PK's struggles helped him triumph in the end, and proved his worth as a caring human being, perhaps even a Rainmaker.