Review of Trouble the Water (2008) by Tom A — 29 Oct 2008

A few days before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans resident Kimberly Roberts bought a second-hand Hi8 video camera -- then, because she had no way to get out of the city, she suffered through the disaster and videotaped it.

A couple of weeks later, filmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin ran into her and created this arresting documentary about how her and her husband Scott heroically braved the hurricane (holing up in the attic as the waters rose to the 2nd level of their house), rescued a number of citizens and drove them to safety in Alexandria, and then returned to New Orleans weeks later to try to build their lives back up again.

While we get all the now-familiar (yet still shocking) information about how US governments at municipal, state and federal levels all completely abandoned the city, what really resonates is the personal stories of survival and triumph.

The Roberts' are incredibly strong people. Kim, an aspiring hip-hop artist, holds inner reserves of strength that propel her forward after losing friends and relatives to the storm, and Scott stands by her through all of it, neither of them panicking even once or losing their faith in God and their ability to survive this.

Kim's footage is terrifying -- trapped in an attic as the water climbs higher, she manages to keep everyone under control and calmed down. In one hypnotic scene she raps a song she wrote about her troubled life -- she stares down the camera and sings with fury and passion.

Deal and Lessin weave her uplifiting story seamlessly together with a portrait of the devastation as a whole (today much of the Lower Ninth Ward is still demolished) and an examination of the criminal neglect of the city: the mayor orders an evacuation yet provides no public transportation for the tens of thousands of citizens who do not own cars; the Louisiana National Guard are stationed in Iraq, where President Bush keeps them as he feels they are more needed there than in New Orleans; how the Naval Base in New Orleans forced homeless and starving citizens away at gunpoint rather than provide them with shelter in the base's vacant apartments; and finally, how billions of dollars earmarked for Katrina relief were never disbursed.

A heartbreaking yet hopeful film.