The Power of One is a 1992 drama film based on the 1989 novel of the same name by Bryce Courtenay. Set in South Africa during the 1930s and 1940s, the film centers on the life of Peter Philip 'P.K.' Kenneth-Keith, a young English boy raised during the apartheid era, and his relationship with a German pianist, a Coloured prisoner and a boxing coach. Directed and edited by John G. Avildsen, the film adaptation stars Stephen Dorff, John Gielgud, Morgan Freeman, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Daniel Craig in one of his early roles.
Synopsis
Born in 1930 to a recently widowed British-born mother on a farm in rural South Africa, P.K. leads a simple life initially, learning the ways of England from his mother and the ways of Africa from his Zulu nanny (Nomadlozi Kubheka), whose son Tonderai is his best friend. However everything changes for the worse for P.K. when the cattle are struck down by plague, causing his mother to have a nervous breakdown. While his mother is recovering, PK is sent to an Afrikaner boarding school. Being the only English boy, he soon becomes the target of serious bullying. They claim to hold him responsible for the deaths of thousands of Afrikaners Second Anglo-Boer War and vow to punish him accordingly.
PK is victimised by all the boys at the school, but most of all by the older boys, led by Jaapie Botha. In one incident, PK is urinated on by Botha and the other students, earning the name "Pisskop" (pisshead in Afrikaans). This causes him to begin wetting the bed. Later when he goes home to attend his mother's funeral, he tells Nanny about the bedwetting. She arranges for the Zulu medicine man Dabula Manzi to come and cure PK of his bedwetting. Dabula Manzi helps PK to conquer his fears by leading him into the dreamworld. He also shows PK a piece of "magic" involving chickens, where the chicken remains sitting and docile within a circle drawn in the dust. PK is given a chicken, which he names Mother Courage (in the book, the chicken is named Grandpa Chook).
One day, coinciding with the rise of Hitler, PK is captured, along with Mother Courage, by the other boys and brought to a mock-trial by Botha, which reveals his new obsession with Hitler and the depths of his hatred for the English. First, Mother Courage is taken, and hung from the ceiling, Botha killing her by hitting her with a rock from a sling. Enraged, PK lunges at Botha, knocking him backwards onto a small flag that pierces his buttocks, humiliating Botha when the other boys laugh at his pain and embarrassment. In anger, Botha orders PK to be hung in the same position as Mother Courage, where Botha hits him in the forehead with a rock from his sling, knocking him unconscious. At that moment a teacher comes in, sees what's happening, and slaps Botha in the face, calling him a "dummkop" (stupid). We learn later that Botha is expelled from the school for his psychopathic behavior and viewed as a disgrace by his family.
With his Mother and pet chicken both dead, and Tonderai and Nanny forced to return to Southern Rhodesia the outlook seems bleak for PK, as he finds himself alone in the world. However a bright spot appears on the horizon when PK's grandfather arrives back from the Congo and PK goes to live with him in Barberton. However, as they fail to connect, his grandfather asks a friend of his to see him, a German pianist and amateur botanist, Karl 'Doc' von Vollensteen (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Doc sees PK as a sort of replacement for his dead grandson, and, with his grandfather's agreement, Doc begins to mentor the young PK and provides him also with piano lessons.
However, just as World War II begins, Doc is arrested and interned in Barberton Prison for failure to register as an enemy alien. The head of the prison staff, Kommandant van Zyl, a Boer who admires German culture, allows Doc to keep a cactus garden in the courtyard, his piano in his cell, and have unlimited visitation by PK. Doc is dismayed by PK's merely "satisfactory" marks at school, where smart kids are bullied, and arranges for him to be taught boxing by a Cape-Coloured prisoner named Geel Piet (Afrikaans for "Yellow Peter" (Morgan Freeman). Geel Piet becomes another mentor for PK, training him to become an excellent boxer.
PK, now 12, feels compassion and sympathy for the appallingly treated black prisoners. Doc and he supply contraband tobacco to Geel Piet for distribution to the other prisoners, and PK also becomes their unofficial letter-writer, treating all the tribes alike. As a result, many of the prisoners start calling PK The Rainmaker. Almost at the end of the war, the Kommandant asks Doc to organise a concert to celebrate the annual visit by the Commissioner of Prisons. At Geel Piet's request, Doc agrees, and the three scheme to create a concert based on subversive singing by the prisoners. On the night of the concert, PK is worried by Geel Piet's absence. When he sees a blood-spattered Sgt Bormann appear at the fence behind the stage, PK runs off and finds Geel Piet lying near death in the yard, the victim of Bormann's bludgeoning. Geel Piet dies in PK's arms.
After the end of the war, Doc is freed, but returns to his native Germany. In 1948, PK, now 18 (Stephen Dorff), is attending the prestigious Prince of Wales School in Johannesburg. He has won the respect of the school headmaster, Prof. St. John (Sir John Gielgud), who arranges a scholarship for PK due to his lack of funds. His best friend is Morrie Gilbert, also his manager who schedules boxing fights for him.
At the Johannesburg Schools Boxing Championship, PK sees an Afrikaner girl (Fay Masterson) in the audience whom he immediately fancies. Later, via Morrie, he learns that she is none other than Maria Elisabet Marais, daughter of the leading intellectual of the National Party, Prof. Daniel Marais, who is tipped to soon become head of government.
Since her father obviously will not permit them to date, they do so secretly, and she accompanies him to the Alexandra township to a boxing fight against a Black boxer, Gideon Duma (Alois Moyo). Even though the latter loses the bout, Gideon and PK become good friends.
Duma's passion for resisting apartheid prompts PK to return temporarily to the African countryside of his childhood, inspiring him and Morrie to begin English classes for the blacks. This, along with PK's romance with Maria, and his links with an unsegregated gym led by anti-racist Afrikaner boxing coach Hoppie Gruenewald, attracts the wrath of Dr. Marais and the police.
In one raid on the gym, PK is forced to confront his childhood enemy Jaapie Botha, now a police seargent (Daniel Craig). Botha blames PK for his expulsion from school after the incident with the sling and warns him that they still have unfinished business.
At the same time, his blossoming relationship with Maria begins to deepen, in spite of her father's objections, but comes to a tragic end when, during a police raid on Morrie's uncle's Anglican church during one of the English lessons, Maria is killed by a blow to the head from a policeman's truncheon. Maddened with grief, PK breaks a chair on the cop's face. The experience temporarily crushes PK, but Gideon resurrects his spirits when he shows him the enormous difference that learning English is beginning to make to the people.
Events come to a violent climax that night when police, including Botha, raid a party in Alexandra township in search of PK. They enter in full force, indiscriminately shooting and bludgeoning people. As a deranged Botha prepares to shoot the boxing promoter, Mr. Elias Mlungisi, PK steps out of hiding, demanding that he end the raid. Both men square off and fight each other, with PK eventually knocking Botha out. As PK tries to care for Mr Mlungisi, his back turned to Botha, Botha reawakens and attempts to shoot PK, but Gideon Duma appears and swings a 2x4 like a baseball bat, smashing Botha in the head and presumably killing him.
The next morning, both men hide out in the scrubland as a Land Rover goes by loaded with police and then set off into the morning sunshine in their campaign against the regime, PK recounting the various voices in his life, from Mother and Nanny, to Doc and Dabula Manzi, and finally Maria.
Soundtrack
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