Spike Lee opens the floodgates
In his documentary “When the Levees Broke,” filmmaker Spike Lee tells the story of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina in such detail and with such conviction that it is as if he is daring the viewer not to care.
RELATED: Chip Franklin and I discuss "Levees" on WBAL Radio.
Timed to the one-year anniversary of the floodwaters breaching the levees, the four-hour HBO program is the standout in a weeklong remembrance of the storms that displaced 1.5 million people across the Gulf Coast.
Lee has not made an upbeat film, and even the moments of humor (mostly gallows, like the bumper sticker “New Orleans: Proud to Swim Home”) do little to break the gloom. Using no narration and a host of eyewitnesses, including ordinary African-American and white residents as well as academic and media observers, Lee is able to cover a lot of territory in four hours, with little repetition. Despite its biases and often strident tone, “When the Levees Broke” can fairly be called the definitive chronicle of the 11 months since Katrina swept away much of the Crescent City.
The film’s subtitle is “A Requiem in Four Acts.” The first two hours, or acts, air 8 p.m. CT Monday on HBO. The third and fourth air at 8 p.m. Tuesday. (The whole opus replays Aug. 29, the anniversary of the day the levees broke.)
It’s not always clear what the acts represent. Some themes, especially government incompetence, recur throughout the film. But a division can roughly be made by moods: shock, anger, grief and valor.
Act I (shock) replays the events of Katrina’s pending arrival, its onslaught and the aftermath. We meet the cast of citizens whose stories we will become familiar with during the film.
As the storm bears down on New Orleans, those who stayed behind realize they have gambled and lost. Recalling that night, Phyllis Montana LeBlanc, one of the more colorful of the roughly 100 subjects chosen by Lee for the film, recalls thinking, “What if this is actually God’s will for us to die?”
LeBlanc is first subjected to the terror of watching the floodwaters destroy everything around her, then the seemingly endless series of insults: the 911 calls unanswered, the journey on foot to an evacuation point, the plane ride to nowhere, the FEMA trailer and the interminable pleading for assistance that continues to this day.
But even with her family scattered across the country, LeBlanc is adamant: “Whether you try to drown me or I die naturally, I’m going to stay here till the end.”
For all the problems with local response, “When the Levees Broke” depicts New Orleans as, above all, a victim of the federal government that was slow-footed and indifferent in its response.
The film manages to work in just about every Bush administration screw-up, from the president’s “I don’t think anybody anticipated the breach of the levees” and his ridiculously overlit media op at Jackson Square to Condi’s shopping for Blahniks during the height of the crisis and Barbara Bush’s observation at the Houston Astrodome that being displaced “is working very well” for the poor people waylaid there.
Act II (anger) finds the growing outrage among the survivors as relief is slow in coming.
“I’ve never seen such a time when the U.S. government turned its backs on people in need to this degree,” says historian and Tulane prof Douglas Brinkley.
The saddest moments are in Tuesday’s first hour, Act III (grief). Survivors talk of depression. Doctors attest to seeing post-traumatic stress cases all day.
At times Lee’s access is quite remarkable. He is invited to the burial of a 5-year-old girl whose body was discovered six months after the flood. In what is the most heartrending scene of the four hours, the child’s mother stumbles away from the camera at the funeral, wailing despondently.
Acts III and IV provide the backstory that’s crucial to understanding why the Big Easy’s recovery will be more of a struggle than, say, had Portland or St. Paul been flooded. Conceived in slavery, New Orleans in recent years had been drowning in rampant crime, poor schools and grinding poverty.
The solemn and dignified soundtrack for “When the Levees Broke” is composed by longtime Lee collaborator and New Orleans native Terence Blanchard. He allows Lee to film his return with his mother as she views her wiped-out home for the first time.
As she breaks down in tears, her son consoles her, saying, “We can rebuild.”
“That is easier said than done,” she says, sobbing.
The theme of Act IV is best expressed by one Ninth Ward resident as he stands defiantly in front of the rubble that was his home: “Hell no — I’m going to keep my raggedy house,” he says.
The hour is bookended by scenes from a traditional New Orleans-style brass band funeral. The coffin is labeled “Katrina.” It’s a symbolic burial, perhaps staged for the cameras, to show the survivors ready to move on.
In between, however, there’s a lot of consternation over the quickie rebuild of the levees, the rumors of a “land grab” and gentrification in the Lower Ninth. And there is the response of the insurance industry. Wendell Pierce, actor on HBO’s “The Wire” and Pontchartrain Park native, tells about being with his father as he learned that insurance would only pay a fraction of the value of his home after he paid a lifetime of premiums. Pierce suggests there will be “a special circle of hell” for insurers.
Lee leaves it an open question whether the New Orleans heroized in his film will even exist in five years.
Or, many wonder, should exist. Ted Steinberg, an author not interviewed by Lee, presciently singled out New Orleans in his 2000 book Acts of God as a place where “mass death” would occur if the city took a direct hit from a hurricane — levees or no levees.
That is one of the few things, though, not touched on by this film. Instead, “When the Levees Broke” bombards us with spirited music, Mardi Gras exuberance and sound bites from flinty natives who vow to keep their inheritances of real estate in the family. These people love their city, and Lee seems to demand that love be requited, by any means necessary.
