Review of Trouble the Water (2008) by Keith C — 27 May 2009

"Trouble the Water" goes inside the Hurricane Katrina nightmare like no news report ever did, and it's for this reason alone that the film is a must-view. Having said that, I found myself to be strangely detatched from certain elements and wanting more from the film. I had to remind myself that some of what I was looking for in the film was not what the film was trying to accomplish.

I would have liked to have seen more individual stories of hurricane victims, but instead, we are given only one story -- that of Kimberly Rivers Roberts. This is because the majority of the documentary's footage is Kimberly's own. (Never mind the fact that I wondered for long periods of time how it was that she came in possession of a video camera, how she paid for the tapes, and how she kept the footage from being destroyed.) Because this large-scale disaster is only shown through the viewpoint of one person, it is similar to a "Night"-like approach to the Holocaust in that its humanity lies in focusing a huge tragedy down to the personal touch of witnessing one person's experience with it.

Personally, I wanted more than just Kimberly's story, as compelling as it was. For this reason, I much preferred Spike Lee's more expansive look at Hurricane Katrina for HBO, "When the Levees Broke.".

"Trouble the Water" was nominated for Best Documentary Feature this year and was considered to be a sentimental favorite, though it lost to the much better (if you ask me) "Man on Wire.".

I think people should watch this film to really understand the situation from a zoomed-in point of view. But my brain wanted to tackle the politics of the debacle, the scope of the chaos and the heartbreak of the devesation with more expanse that this film aimed to provide.

All of this is to say that for what it was, "Trouble the Water" was very good. I struggled because of what it wasn't that I was looking for instead.