Most recently I’ve been on a little Hurricane Katrina kick. My fiancée bought me Dave Eggers book Zeitoun following Abdulrahman Zeitoun, a Syrian-American, before, during and after Hurricane Katrina. Also for those of you that read on a regular basis, you know of my new found love for David Simon’s post-Katrina New Orleans series “Treme.”
So from there I branched out and queued the 2008 Acadamy Award Nominated documentary film “Trouble the Water” and Spike Lee’s 2006 HBO doc “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts.” Both films were released when I was out of the country. So I’m just now catching up.
It’s nice to see real documentaries. We’ve been living with Michael Moore for so long that people think a documentary is about filmmaker giving his opinion to the camera and then making fun of the opposition. Well both of these films realize that the real story is not the filmmaker. Thank god! Great documentaries are like news stories in the feature section of the newspaper. They’re not like columns on the opinion page.
Sorry to trash Michael Moore. I know some people think of him as a god. To be honest I agree with a lot of his politics. I think he’s a great spokesmen for the disenfranchised but he’s not a great filmmaker. He’s a propagandist. I think Leni Riefenstahl is likely one of his biggest influences.
Ironically enough Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, the directors and producers of “Trouble the Water,” have worked with Moore on many of his projects. Tia has worked on nearly every Moore film. Congrats to her for not following in his footsteps.
Okay, enough with Moore. The reason these films are superior is because they let the story tell itself. Lee’s film is broader. It discusses the failures of the federal government to step in and take control of the situation. The story is told through a series of interviews with survivors and experts intermingled with news clips and interviews during Katrina. (Sean Penn is also interviewed. I had no idea that he flew down and rescued people himself. I’ve gained new respect for the man. Although he still has a long way to climb after “The Interpreter.”)
“Trouble the Water” is the story of Kimberly Rivers Roberts and her husband Scott. Through intercut clips of news footage, documentary footage and Kimberly’s footage during the hurricane with her camcorder, we see what a real family had to do to survive. No one else was going to save them so they did it themselves.
One of the saddest scenes in “Trouble the Water” is Kimberly’s commentary where she says she wants to leave but she doesn’t have a car. She talks about being unable to afford it. Mayor Ray Nagin was quick to order a mandatory evacuation but no public transportation was set up to help those who were unable to leave on their own.
Although a lot of the information in both films and the book are the same, each source also provides information the others didn’t have. Zeitoun goes into detail about the treatment of prisoners during Katrina. While Lee focuses on the lack of organization. In “Trouble the Water” there is a disturbing scene where Kimberly and her family are turned away by gunpoint at an abandoned Naval base capable of housing 1,000s of people. The Navy rep that was interviewed for the film had the nerve to say they were protecting America’s interests. Bush gave the men commendations for their work in turning away women and children.
The more I read about Katrina the more I want to live in another country.
