Kiki
The only reason why I put up with Spike Lee for 4 hours was because I wanted to watch an educational film about New Orleans. I currently live in the area and wanted to get a perspective for what the natives went through when Katrina descended.Spike Lee had the potential to make his best docu-film ever. There is plenty of material to draw from here. Instead he turns this film into a mostly black film. Blacks and the occasional whites aren't the only people who live here though I realize that they make a sizable majority. The segment on the Vietnamese was too short and there was no mention of the Hispanics who helped rebuild the city. Lee failed to mention how some blacks would target Hispanics because they carry cash on them and were scared to call the cops on them due to their immigration status. NOLA also has a Muslim and Middle Eastern community. This isn't counting other ethnic and religious communities. Poor blacks weren't the only people affected by the storm, but it makes for great ratings. His myopia and ethnocentrism is mind boggling. I can't believe he made it this far.I am not a conservative, but the liberal bias in the film is over the top. The poor and pitiful portrayal that many segments of the black community received is highly inaccurate and makes them look impotent waiting for the government to rescue them. It inadvertently perpetuates stereotypes of them and the liberal whites who pity them and carry a guilt complex that they need to cleanse every time they help them. I know that the Feds provided a poor response and that is reprehensible. I also take issue with MS receiving a greater share of funds. I think that NOLA's reputation precedes it. NOLA has always been a city of strong contrasts in class, society and race. The recovery since the storm has only made this more apparent. The recovery post-Katrina has brought out many inadequacies that need to be fixed. After the worst of the storm passed the people could have been more proactive and helped each other more. Instead the corruption that NOLA is known for came back.I believe that an effective documentary gives both sides air time. This is what documentaries are about. If you want to make a film all about your ideas you should make a movie.I'm glad I wasn't the only wondering what the hell was a foot fetish guy talking about finding a woman with a house (aka freeloading freak) doing in a documentary.I wish he would have put a segment on the animals left behind who died in the storm and the ones who starved after-wards.I think the Haiti segment was perhaps a metaphor for how blacks always get the shaft, even from Mother Nature. Tragedies happen to all of us, but how we handle them is what defines us. We don't allow tragedy to make us.The oil spill segment was better. That is truly tragic for all living being, especially the animals who cannot speak for themselves. I found the BP poetry segment pretty cool, Bitch Please! I liked the poetic, musical and football segments as they gave levity to the film. Maybe Spike Lee should have used his artistic insights to make a fun Katrina film.
mysticnox
I don't understand why this has such a low rating on here.I'm a New Orleans resident, though I wasn't at the time, my fiancé was. We married in 2006. It was devastating for all the people who lived through it. Yes, there are a few things I don't get. Like why the heck did he put anything about Haiti on there? It only deserved maybe 30 seconds to show that the United States govt had a better and quicker reaction to Haiti than it did to its own people, not 10-15 minutes. Yes, Haiti was worse. But so what. The point is that the US Gvt reaction should have been better toward its own people. This country is supposed to be the greatest nation on earth. It isn't. Its own ideology is its own worst enemy. The whole reason for govt to exist is to deal with situations like what happened in New Orleans but when the govt's hands are tied, people die. Have to say, I'm more convinced than ever due to this film that placing the whole blame on Bush and his regime is the right thing to do.I also have to say that it was so emotionally jarring that I had to watch it in two parts and several days apart. Its like being put through the ringer.
MisterWhiplash
When the Levees Broke is one of the monumental outcries of injustice and searing documents of an era and place and people in the movies. Spike Lee turned his focus in an epic way not seen since Malcom X on to the fiasco of Katrina, and it was cathartic and engaging and enraging on a level few documentaries in recent memory can be. It's then somewhat expected that his follow-up, If God is Willing and Da Creek Don't Rise, isn't quite as great. It's certainly more reasoned and not quite as angry (though it has its moments), but if it suffers it's from some reliance on deja-vu, cut-backs to clips from the previous documentary, and a couple of scenes that could have been shuffled around to better emotional effect. It also just *ends* a little abruptly, though its ending may need a re-watch to get a better grasp on the tragic issue at hand.... that is, for the first half of the documentaryWhat's been going on since 2005, or 2006? Turns out, some things, not all savory. One of the things to keep in mind is Naomi Klein's Shock Doctrine, which posited how when a disaster strikes (i.e. Katrina) those in power will scramble to make sure that those at the bottom, who are in effect *shocked* will be those that will be screwed over. So, in other words, you get a situation like the lower 9th ward housing projects- many of which were sound structures, if not in the best condition to start with- that were torn down to make room for new buildings at much higher costs. This was further represented in the documentary by the Charity Hospital saga, one of the cities most prominent and loved hospitals for the public, which was in short that because the basement was flooded the state closed the hospital for years and planned to tear down the hospital, and tear down many nearby houses and businesses to make room for a much larger *private* hospital. More money for insurance companies. The ultimate thesis, if there is one to be defined, in Lee's film is that little by little there is some progress (for example, Brad Pitt's housing contributions), but there's still much, much wrong down there, and by the second half of the film, which itself seems to be its own documentary, the BP oil spill has made things cataclysmic. Of course by this point Lee's work has taken on a near apocalyptic feeling to it, accentuated by a montage of the dead strewn throughout the landscape of New Orleans put to genuinely mournful music. If you watched it out of context you'd think someone was putting together footage for Cormac McCarthy's The Road. It is, or was, all real. There's still little care taken to victims of stress and mental illnesses. The trailers via FEMA have things like a formaldehyde problem. Many residents had to leave the city and still have not returned (though they want to since it was their home) because of a lack of affordable housing or services for their disabled children. And those that were in charge, supposedly, at the time, come clean, like Michael Brown (his interview almost makes the film a total must-see). There's a little good and still a whole lot that can be improved, and a lot may never be due to a not-so-veiled look at race, and how screwed up the US Corps were with the Levees to start with. We see them now rebuilding in the doc, but how safe can it really be? Adding to this the mixed results of Charter schools, the rampant police brutality that makes L.A. look safe by comparison, and of course the oil spill – the dramatic highlight of the second half that gives even those of us given the news every day by the media a fresh and horrifying perspective – and you get a city that keeps keeping on, but as one interviewer says, the people are like "bollweevils" that can topple over.Again, some focus is lost by Lee from time to time, such as a sidebar comparison with Haiti's earthquake devastation (albeit some interesting interview with Sean Penn does a long way to make the comparison valid), and for some reason some of the pacing felt a little 'off', like some of the segments could have been shuffled around. But these are minor criticisms in what is overall a very strong work in the first half of the film. It's almost as if, unlike 'Levees' which felt like a complete epic work, that each of the two-hour segments that aired on HBO were separate documentaries. They're still linked in theme and style and the subject matter, but something about Lee's approach gains more focus and momentum in the second half, when the charter schools, police and BP are the subjects. There is also less reliance on clips from the previous film, less of the 'where's this person now', save for a moving scene with a band leader in high school who was needlessly murdered by a 15 year old.Lee has compassion and understanding for the people, some of whom are only marginally better off than when he first interviewed them. It's these personal interviews, and the insight that Lee carefully gets out of professionals in medical and other capacities like politicians, not to mention his talent at compositions of images (i.e. the absent houses with just steps montage put to mournful jazz music) and those heartbreaking montages, that makes his film worthwhile. 9.5/10
