Nice job, Spike Lee. Seriously.

Cafe Society
1

The first two acts of Spike Lee’s HBO documentary, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts aired last night, and I was pretty impressed.

So far, it’s been mostly a straight forward time-line style documentary. But, he did a great job of organizing it, and has found some very interesting characters to interview for the piece (particularly the “sassy” black lady – the one getting “prayed up” before the storm hit.)

He also had some footage that I’ve never seen. In particular, there was one shot of a man who walked through rain and wind right up to a stationary news camera and said to the cameraman, the levee just broke, and such-and-such street is starting to fill with water.

The dead body montage at the end was amazing.

He definitely is slamming the Federal handling of it, but no worse than the MSM was doing at the time so it doesn’t feel like he’s overly grinding his axe.

He almost lost me at about the 20 minute mark when he started giving creedence to the voices saying that they thought the levees were blown up. But, then he framed that in its historical context (and included footage from 1927 in which a levee really HAD been blown up). But, it seemed to me that he wasn’t really playing up that conspiracy theory, but just showing that level of distrust that exists that allows people to even “go there”.

So far, I wouldn’t call it a “spike lee joint”. It’s really just a very good, concise, organized documentary about Hurricane Katrina. It ties together so many different facets, you really can’t see Soledad Obrien grilling Brownie too many times, can you?

Guaranteed to win some Emmys come next year.

Any other opinions?

(unfortunately, I’m not going to be able to watch Acts 3 & 4 tonight but I’ll catch them in replay).

Why does anyone NOT have HBO? (ok, I know the answer to that, already, but dang)

2

Overall, I thought it to be well done. Two sour notes: the bit about Condi Rice buying shoes, etc. was completely irrelevant. She’s the SOS, not the head of Homeland Security or FEMA Director. Wynton Marsalis singing “St. James Infirmary”. What an attention whore. I don’t understand why Lee put him in the film.

3

I completely agree with your Marsalis comment. It was completely phony, and seemed even moreso given its contrast with everything else.

The Condi stuff could have been left out. There was enough exposition on the actual bumbling without it, and it seemed more like muck raking.

I thought the shot of Lyndon Johnson was very powerful. A response to anyone who might be thinking “what could Bush have done. . .walked around in flood waters and shook hands?”

4

Even though we weren’t directly affected by Katrina*, my wife and I were looking forward to the program. And we weren’t disappointed. I had a feeling that we would be angry, and again I wasn’t disappointed. My wife was in tears at one point, saying “But they could have done something.” “They” being “the government.”

A few comments:

[ul]
[li]My vote for Harry Belafonte for being the most irrelevant idiot so far.[/li][li]I hadn’t heard the take before about Gov. Blanco punishing Mayor Nagin for not supporting her campaign. I’m not sure I buy that.a[/li][li]One of the strongest thoughts I had was that this was Bush’s golden opportunity to wipe away a multitude of sins. And he blew it. To hell with “state’s rights” and going through the proper channels.[/li][/ul]

*However, everyone in south Louisiana was at least indirectly affected in a lot of ways. In my case, I had a nephew and his wife who lost their home (she was a nurse in Memorial hospital for 4 days after the hurricane), my stepson’s Coast Guard unit was deployed there to evacuate residents, and my brother commanded a National Guard battalion guarding the Audobon Park area immediately after the hurricane.

5

I was sort of directly affected, once-removed, by Katrina. I’m a New Orleans native who has lived in Baton Rouge since graduating college. My mother and sisters evacuated to us here before the storm. My mother’s (my childhood) home sustained major roof and some structural damage but didn’t flood. None of my extended family was in harm’s way or had major damage to their homes.

That being said, last year was a profoundly emotionally traumatic experience for me. It’s been difficult to explain to my husband and to people who are not New Orleans natives what I have been feeling. It’s been rather like a death in the family, when you suddenly realize that you truly can’t go home again, because home is forever changed and will never be the same.

I expected to be more emotionally ravaged by Spike Lee’s HBO documentary last night. I was hit by small moments… the part Trunk mentioned of the distressed man walking out of his neighborhood towards the news camera as the storm is ending, with the word that the water is coming up fast – the first word that the nightmare is only beginning. It was chilling. Another came toward the end, when one of the residents of the Lower Ninth talked about seeing the body of one of his neighbors, bloated and swollen from the heat and water, wedged against wreckage. He just said quietly, “His name was Eddie,” and that led into the montage of the dead.

It had never occurred to me how the experience of Katrina for blacks in New Orleans would have mirrored their imagining of slave trading. I believe it was Michael Eric Dyson who pointed that out.

It sickens me that no one will never have to answer for the fact that the MOUNTIES from friggin’ VANCOUVER got to St. Bernard Parish before our own goddam government did. Nor has anyone ever adequately answered the question as to why at least FOOD AND GODDAM WATER couldn’t be dropped in if rescues couldn’t be immediately coordinated.

I expect Spike Lee will be criticized for presenting a nearly exclusively black and New Orleanian point-of-view of the Katrina experience. Of the people who died in Louisiana in the storm, it was nearly a 50/50 split of black and white. I am reserving judgment until I see the rest of the docu tonight. In interviews, he does seem to be emphasizing that it’s more of an issue of being screwed if you’re poor rather than being screwed if you’re a particular color.

I took some sedating cough medicine to help me sleep last night after watching it because I didn’t want any bad dreams.

6

My only disappointment was that Spike didn’t show that ridiculous picture of our fearless prez hamming it up on that air guitar while dead bodies floated through the streets of New Orleans.