When the Levees Broke

On Thursday I took the DVD of Spike Lee's documentary about Katrina--When the Levees Broke--out of the library. It is described as "a requiem in four acts", each about an hour long. Since I have to return the DVD today, I've been through a very intense period of TV-watching.
It's a brilliant film. Lee mixes original TV footage of the disaster, old films of New Orleans and new footage shot starting a few months after Katrina. It's held together with music, much of it filmed live in New Orleans, and with a very large cast of "talking heads", many of them local people simply telling their stories, others experts such as engineers and physicians. He managed to interview most of the major characters--the mayor, the chief of police, the governor and lieutenant governor--and also adds a scattering of the very famous such as Soledad O'Brien, Wynton Marsalis, Harry Belefonte and a superstar rapper whose name I can't remember but who gained special fame by saying unexpectedly, on a national television program, "Mr. Bush doesn't care about Black people."

I was devastated and deeply moved by the film. Roger and I were out of the country when Katrina hit and spent the first part of the aftermath in Malawi so much of the television footage was new to me. I learned things that I hadn't understood before. This is especially true of the resulting diaspora--some of the survivors likened it to their slave history. Families were separated--even small children from parents (Lee managed to film one reunion)--and no one was given any choice of where to go. In fact, unbelievably, people were put on buses and airplanes without being told of the destination; one woman asked the bus driver where they were going and he claimed not to know. And this at the end of five days huddled in the superdome without food or water or sanitation.

A few of the talking heads stand out--Mr. Marsalis, at one point, sings "Saint James Infirmary". His singing voice doesn't really match his other musical talents, but that somehow makes the moment all the more moving--he's just a guy in a suit singing a really sad song about New Orleans. At another point he calls the response to Katrina a "signature" moment in American history--likening it to when you look in a mirror and suddenly realize what you really look like. But are we looking?

Another memorable section is the interview of Soledad O'Brien; her interview of the head of FEMA is shown first. She then explains that her briefing book contained all sorts of information that the man she was interviewing claimed not to know. "How could he not know?" She asks "My 23 year old research assistant had better information than he did." She also talks about covering the story live from New Orleans and seeing bodies on the streets--bodies that simply stayed in the same place for days.

The photography is powerful; there is a lot of very lively music and there are even some very funny bits such as a teenager giving a house tour of a FEMA trailer where things keep falling apart in his hands. Watch it if you can!