Publicity
poster for Powder (© Hollywood
Pictures/Caravan Pictures/Roger Birnbaum Productions/Daniel Grodnick Productions/Buena
Vista Pictures – reproduced here on a strictly non-commercial Fair Use basis for
educational/review purposes only)
Having watched an inordinate number and
variety of movies at home this year due in no small way to the frequent
Covid-enforced lockdowns and attendant ongoing social restrictions, I suppose
that I'm possibly at risk of becoming somewhat blasé to films that under normal
circumstances might have moved me more than they have done. But not last night,
when I watched on DVD a film that didn't so much move me as spin me around in a
veritable vortex of emotion, bowling me over with the raw power of the thunder
and rending me asunder with the electrifying energy of the lightning that form
such an integral part of this truly awesome movie. Its title? Powder.
SPOILER
ALERT – I need and very much want to tell the story of this amazing film, so
read no further if you don't want to know its plot.
Released in 1995, Powder tells the inspirational,
often heartbreakingly sad, but truly extraordinary story of a truly
extraordinary person. Played with immense poignancy and control by Sean Patrick
Flanery, his name is Jeremy Reed, but his nickname is Powder, which, although
never explained, presumably refers to his pure white skin, as pale as talcum
powder. For Powder is an albino, with photo-sensitive pink eyes that he shields
from the sun's pain-inducing rays behind dark sunglasses. Moreover, for reasons
that subsequently become clear, he is also entirely, naturally hairless.
Powder's mother was in late pregnancy
with him when she was struck by lightning during a thunderstorm. Paramedics
rushed her to hospital, but tragically they were unable to save her. However,
Powder was delivered alive and was in an incubator when his grief-stricken father
was told the shattering news of his wife's passing. When he asked to see their baby and
discovered that Powder was an albino, he disowned him. Happily, Powder's
grandparents accepted him and reared him on their large but fairly isolated farm,
where he grew strong, carrying out all of the chores too arduous for them. On
account of his appearance, they did not send Powder to school but his grandmother
home-schooled him with the many books that they kept stored in the farmhouse's cool, roomy
basement, and where Powder would spend a lot of time reading them, especially
when it was too hot and bright outside for his pallid skin and sensitive eyes
to endure.
Eventually, Powder's grandmother died,
and some time afterwards his grandfather fell over and also died, at which time
Powder was in his late teens/early 20s. Very distraught, Powder phoned the
police, who send out two officers to the farm (marking the beginning of the
movie's principal portion), where they are shocked at Powder's appearance and
strange, almost unearthly demeanour. However, one of the officers, Sheriff Doug Barnum
(Lance Henriksen), sees the shy, frightened, traumatized youth behind his
singular countenance, and treats him compassionately, as does the accompanying
child psychologist Jessie Caldwell (Mary Steenbergen), but the other, much more
brutal officer, Deputy Sheriff Harley Duncan (Brandon Smith), is visibly and
verbally revulsed.
As a ward of court now, Powder is taken
to a state home for dispossessed youths by Jessie, but she is able to obtain blue contact lenses for him to protect his eyes, which his grandparents had been unable to afford. She also allows him to
attend a mainstream school when she discovers that he is exceptionally bright and
possesses a photographic memory, having not only memorized but also thoroughly
understood every page in every single book in the basement back home on his grandparents'
farm. Moreover, it is now that we begin to see a very different gift also exhibited
by Powder – the ability to manipulate energy, especially electrical energy,
seemingly a direct outcome of having been exposed while in his mother's womb to
the bolt of lightning that killed her. He can move objects by telekinesis, much
to the consternation of the bullies at the state home when they tried to torment
him following his arrival there.
Moreover, electricity seems irresistibly drawn to him. For instance, when a piece of demonstration equipment – a Jacob's Ladder – in his physics class at
school generates a series of high-voltage, travelling electrical arcs, suddenly
the electricity surges out of the equipment and fires directly into Powder's
chest, raising him horizontally off the ground before physics teacher Donald
Ripley (Jeff Goldblum) is able to shut it off.
Powder is rushed to hospital, but is
found to be entirely unharmed, even though there is a singed hole in his shirt
where the bolt of electricity struck his chest. Donald is fascinated and in awe
of Powder's capabilities. He also realizes why Powder is hairless – the
electricity coursing throughout every cell of his body is acting as a natural
form of electrolysis. Furthermore, when a series of intelligence tests are run on
him, they reveal that Powder has the highest IQ ever recorded – completely off
the scale, in fact.
Inevitably, however, the youths at the
state home are not impressed by this, leading to ever more bullying, which culminates
in Powder's chief tormentor, John Box (Bradford Tatum), threatening him with a
gun during a deer hunt. But when a deer is fatally shot there by Deputy Sheriff
Duncan, Powder's normally passive, gentle nature evaporates, and he seizes
Duncan's wrist at the same time as placing his own hand on the neck of the dying deer.
In so doing, Powder conducts like an electrical current the pain, shock, and
terror of impending death suffered by the deer directly into Duncan, who promptly
collapses in a seizure, before subsequently coming round. As a result, Duncan, previously a
passionate, enthusiastic hunter, gives up hunting entirely and gets rid of all
of his guns, because he is unable to forget what a shot animal experiences, but he is also unable
to forgive Powder for destroying his former pleasure.
By now, unloved, unwanted, misunderstood,
a total outcast simply because he is different, Powder is desperate to return
home to the farm, the only sanctuary that he has ever known, and where he could
once again spend his days away from prying eyes and scurrilous tongues. However,
he is prevented from doing so by legal probate issues, thus making him ever
more agitated and, as a result, his energy-manipulating talents ever more unstable.
Meanwhile, Sheriff Doug Barnum is equally
traumatized – his wife lies close to death, barely conscious and in agonizing
pain from cancer, but for some mystifying reason seems determined to hold onto
life, as if there is something that she wants to see done, to be achieved still.
Desperate to unravel the mystery so that her cryptic wishes can be fulfilled,
thereby enabling her to pass on and be free of her pain, and mindful of claims that Powder can read minds by telepathy, Doug asks him to
come to his home and see if there is anything that he can do.
Powder sits beside her and gently places
his hand on her brow. After a few moments, he tells Doug that his wife wishes
him to make up with their son, Steven, from whom Doug has been estranged for a
long time. She would also like him to place her wedding ring
on her finger – it had been lost for a long time but had recently been
found by Steven who had returned it in a small silver jewel box, which was now
on a dressing table in the bedroom. So Doug tenderly places the ring on his wife's
finger, promises that he and Steven will make up, and tells her how much he
loves her, after which she smiles and passes on, her wishes all fulfilled, her
pain all gone. At this point, I paused the film for a while – too many similar
memories and emotions from my mother's passing.
Another, even more savage encounter with
the bullies at the state home takes place a little later, but this time during a thunderstorm,
in which Powder's fear and unleashed rage results in the storm's lightning
discharging through him and seemingly killing Box before Powder retakes control
of his powers, harnessing them to successfully restart Box's heart. As a result,
one of the bullies helps Powder to escape back to his farm, only for him to
discover to his despair that everything in it has been removed, even his
beloved books in the basement. He sits there disconsolately as Jessie, Donald,
Doug, and Deputy Sheriff Duncan all arrive, having discovered him missing at
the home and either guessing or learning where he has gone.
Jessie, Doug, and Donald coax Powder to
come out of the house, with Jessie and Donald promising that they will take him
where no-one can ever harm or mistreat him again, where he will be appreciated
for the truly astonishing person that he is. Duncan, however, grabs a police
walkie-talkie, and calls for police back-up. At the same time, another
thunderstorm begins, so, knowing how dangerous and unpredictable it can be for Powder to be outside in such weather, Jessie, Doug, and Donald implore him to get
into their car.
Instead, in an outpouring of beatific joy
and ultimate release, Powder runs across a field, laughing at last and with
arms fully outstretched, greeting the storm as if it were a dear friend, with
the others following close behind and greatly alarmed, until suddenly, an enormous
bolt of lightning strikes down from the heavens, hitting Powder with explosive
force – and he is gone.
During his brief time spent with Jessie,
Donald, and Doug since being discovered after his grandfather had died, Powder
had always emphasized that everything and everyone is connected to everything else
and everyone else. For we are all energy, and as we all learned at school,
energy cannot be created or destroyed, it can only be transferred from one form
to another. This had greatly comforted Doug following his wife's passing, and
is a concept that I hold onto dearly myself, with my own family no longer here in
physical, tangible form. And now, Powder had become one with the electrical
energy that had infused him even before he was born and had utilized him like a
living capacitor throughout his life. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but energy
undying, unending, universal, forever. So be it.
This very pure, enormously affecting
movie, which reminded me a little at times of The Boy Who Could Fly (click here
to read my review of it) is exquisitely complemented by the gorgeous musical
theme that plays intermittently throughout it – one that I was already very
familiar with, because I had first heard it many years ago, but in the form of
a song, entitled 'No One Like You', which was a track on an album by British
opera/musicals star Sarah Brightman, and which I loved instantly and ever afterwards.
What I didn't realize until much more recently, however, is that the lyrics to
this song had actually been written by Sarah herself, after having watched Powder and being greatly moved just like
me by its beautiful melody. So please click here
to listen to Sarah singing 'No One Like You', her heartfelt lyrics accompanying
the truly sublime theme from an incomparably sublime, mesmerising movie.
If you'd like to experience the
spellbinding wonder, strangeness, sadness, and beauty that is Powder, please click here to view an official trailer for it on
YouTube. And if you are able to watch the full film, do so – because if it moves
you the way that it has moved me, I have no doubt that this remarkable film will stay in our memory
long after most others have slipped away into the void of lost remembrances that I fondly recall my mother aptly
referring to as our forgettery. God bless you Mom, I wish so much that you were
still here with me – but perhaps in some form you are, perhaps in some form you are still and always will
be.
Finally: to view a complete listing of all of my
Shuker In MovieLand blog's other film reviews and articles (each one instantly
accessible via a direct clickable link), please click HERE!
