Nix Bits

Monday and Tuesday night, Jennifer and I sat down to watch Spike Lee’s documentary, When The Levees Broke, on HBO. We watched it through the eyes of locals who are living through the experience.

The quick story is is that the it was excellent and well worth watching for its four hour time frame. It seems just the name “Spike Lee” ignites controversy, but I thought it was an even handed and reasonably detailed treatment of the Katrina experience in New Orleans. If you have HBO you should watch it. If you don’t have HBO, find someone who does and watch it or wait for the DVD.

The intended audience of this film is not us, not the locals. It’s a film for the rest of America to try and bring some real understanding to a topic that is largely misunderstood. Four hours seems like a long time, but it takes four hours to cover the sheer scope of the story in New Orleans. And Spike does an admirable job of hitting the range of topics that are the post-Katrina reality here. And he does it primarily through the voices of New Orleanians. In addition to the obvious points covered in sensational fashion by the news media during the storm, the film covers such diverse topics such as the unique cultural history of New Orleans and the potential future impact, the loss of deep family ties for locals who are now dispersed, the loss of the wetlands below the city, and the ongoing insurance battles residents are experiencing.

He lightens what is obviously a very grim subject with moments of humor, again delivered by New Orleanians in their particular “laugh in the face of all this so you don’t fall apart” way. New Orleanians are funny, natural satirists. The grim parts are very grim. This is an HBO documentary so while the mainstream media may flinch, this film does not. People died unnecessarily and you see them.

A couple of moments really hit hard. When Irving Freeman Jr. relays the story of the death of his mother in the aftermath at the convention center in a monotone narrative, it’s staggering. I literally couldn’t breathe watching it. He eventually had to push her wheelchair aside and leave her body there where it sat for days. The picture of her covered body in a wheelchair next to the red delivery doors of the convention center was published widely. As difficult as this past year has been, we experienced nothing close to the loss Mr. Freeman did and it’s almost unimaginable. That he delivers this tale with no emotion is one of the saddest things I have ever seen.

The other moment that really got to me that I think everyone should see is Terrance Blanchard bringing his elderly mother to her Gentilly home for the first time. You can hear the building anxiety in her voice as they drive towards the house and she’s seeing the city for the first time. She hesitates at the door, almost changing her mind. And what she sees inside is completely overwhelming. The house she raised her now-grown children in is unrecognizable. It’s a scene anyone sitting in their own undamaged living room watching on TV can relate to. Of course, I and far too many of my relatives — several elderly like Mrs. Blanchard — lived this exact experience as well so I’m sure that’s partly why this bit hit me so hard.

Many will expect Spike Lee to use the film as a personal bully pulpit to push his particular point of view. His point of view is certainly present but the film struck me as even handed. Conflicting points of view are laid out without judgement. There are a few obviously pointed jabs, but they are few. The overall tone of the film is a mix of deep sadness and anger. If nothing else, the viewer will get a clear understanding of why New Orleanians feel the way the do about all this.

I didn’t find many flaws. Far too much focus has been on the handling of the “levees were deliberately blown up” idea. Bottom line, its well handled and just one small piece of the whole. I could’ve done with less Al Sharpton and Harry Belefonte and more locals and scientists but they didn’t get all that much screen time anyway. I could’ve done with less Marc Morial or perhaps some rebuttals of his statements but that’s because I really, really don’t like the man and think he’s sleazy. He gets off looking way too clean for my taste. Some will fault the film’s relatively gentle handling of local and state officials. Their failures are well known and if anything have received a lot of play already — a lot of people really want to push all the blame downhill. And I’m guessing that not a lot of the federal players agreed to be interviewed for this either. Part of the film’s thesis is the widely held belief in New Orleans that this was a huge systemic failure at every level and that the federal government deserves are huge portion of the blame for this preventable disaster. Some people won’t buy that no matter how much evidence is presented, but some people think the moon landing was staged.

The one bit that probably could’ve been edited out was the snippet of Mississippi where Cheney’s foul mouthed words from the Senate floor were echoed back to him by a local citizen. The story of Katrina in Mississippi is an important tale that needs its own detailed rendering. It would have been better to deliberately and explicitely leave Mississippi out of this telling rather than giving it this three minute snippet.

The biggest flaw in the film is that not enough people will see it. It’s on HBO. It’s Spike Lee. The people who need to see this film, those who have already formed their opinions based on myths and exaggerations, will ignore it. And that, like just about everything else Katrina-related, is a damn shame.

References:

• The schedule on HBO
  
• Myths about New Orleans
• Where is all that federal aid and how much is there, really?
• Hold the Corps accountable