The Reel Critic

Author: Josh Wessler

MOVIE: Trouble the Water
DIRECTORS: Carl Deal & Tia Lessin

On Aug. 28, 2005, Kimberly Rivers Roberts began filming a documentary of her neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward, New Orleans. Neighbors analyzed the latest storm movements while completing their stocks of food at the local grocery. Restless dogs scurried about while U.S. Army vehicles raced through the streets as if chasing an enemy, or perhaps fleeing one. In the 24 hours after Kim began filming, the American tragedy known as Hurricane Katrina would make landfall - and Kim and her husband Scott Roberts sat in the front row.

In "Trouble the Water," a documentary centered on the Roberts' footage shot during Katrina, Kim appears extremely media savvy. Exhibiting a flair for self-promotion and an eye aimed towards posterity, she begins her documentary by interviewing her neighbors about their preparations for Katrina. Some are confident about riding out the storm, others are resigned to what has surely become a yearly tradition: watching the wealthier residents drain from New Orleans, leaving behind the poorer residents unable to comply with the evacuation. Kim and Scott lack the resources to leave, but Kim states that she is fulfilling another purpose: to show the world that there was a world before Katrina. The implications of this proposition are painfully prescient.

The filmmakers of "Trouble the Water," Tia Lessin and Carl Deal, also produced "Bowling for Columbine" and "Fahrenheit 9/11," yet their latest in no way resembles the hyperactivity of Michael Moore's forays. The only filmmakers "present" in the film are Kim and Scott Roberts. With Moore-like sensibility, the film unabashedly indicts the U.S. government, in its many forms, for the deaths and anguish resulting from the preparation for and response to Katrina. Yet Lessin and Deal avoid demagoguery, instead featuring Kim and Scott's voices, which forcefully and directly express the profound sense of mourning for lives lost and property washed away - and their city, submerged.

This movie may not be for the faint of heart. The nature of its material results in what I might deem the "Blair Witch effect." For those raised in the age of camcorders, this may not be overly problematic. However, coupled with the film's content, a certain sense of nausea is hard to avoid. At times interrupting the narrative of Kim's video, Lessin and Deal provide primary footage collected after the storm. A clip of a TV weatherman nearly sacrificing himself in order to show the force of the winds appears as funny, juxtaposed with heart-wrenching audio of 911 calls by residents, some trapped with small children in attics filling with water. Interspersed are sickening shots of elderly persons languishing in the sun outside the Superdome and of desperate refugees rolling down the interstate on office chairs, begging for a ride out of the city. These shots are ephemeral compared to Spike Lee's opus of human struggle, the four-part Katrina film, "When the Levees Broke," but their impact is nonetheless striking.

The human drama of the film is contained within the Roberts' heroic narrative of their own struggle to rescue themselves and their neighbors and to find a place for themselves amidst the ruins of their home. The film depicts a set of people deeply moved by the storm; Kim and Scott, along with friends made in the course of the film, present themselves as former addicts that saw their lives as worthless. In Katrina's wake, they rediscover their passions and resolve to discard their former addictions. Kim reinvigorates her career as a musician and produces a record of her own material while living in Memphis, Tenn.

Following Katrina, there is clearly a sense of rebirth, if not exactly redemption, in the portrayal of Kim and Scott. But this need not be read only pessimistically, as an attempt to paint a happy face on a tragedy. Regardless of the extent to which Kim and Scott believe that some good may yet result from the utter disruption to their lives, what is clear is that for many, Katrina now serves as the unmovable rock around which memory flows. Life consists of Before Katrina and After Katrina, which may be incomprehensible for those living outside the flood zone. The media outlets will eventually remember Katrina only once a year, volunteer missions to the Gulf coast will likely settle into the collective subconscious, the city's high ground will rebuild itself and cast off the stains of the lowlands. And, sure enough, as if to challenge the country's forgetfulness, filmmakers will continue to salvage unseen footage and rare accounts that will fascinate and devastate for generations to come.