The Standard

Issue date: 3/10/09 Section: Features

"Trouble the Water," boosted by an Academy Award nomination for Best Documentary Feature, is still only playing in a handful of theaters nationwide, including the Moxie here in Springfield. Three and a half years after Hurricane Katrina's devastation, the scathing commentaries in "Trouble the Water" on the Bush administration, racism and the mismanagement that made Hurricane Katrina's devastation far worse than it should have been are too late. Bush has left office, and while Katrina is a profound political lesson, "Trouble the Water" has little to say that hasn't been said many times before.

The most interesting footage in "Trouble the Water," shot on a cheap, handheld camera by New Orleans resident Kimberly Rivers Roberts, is a firsthand account of the hurricane. Roberts and her husband could not afford to leave their home and remained in the city as a levee broke three blocks from their house. They watched as water covered their front porch and began seeping in through their windows as they were forced into the attic. Though the aesthetic is cheap and may induce motion sickness, this is a New Orleans previously unseen on film.

Roberts and her husband are fascinating characters. She's an aspiring rapper (whose mediocre music is featured prominently near the end of the film), and her husband's a former drug dealer. They prove to be truly inspiring, helping elderly neighbors and others escape the flooded neighborhood and, eventually, the city.

Outside the city, they meet up with a documentary film crew. Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin tell some interesting stories Roberts wasn't able to capture on camera. They have an uncanny ability to make the soldiers in New Orleans look especially racist and insensitive. One of the most frightening stories to come out of their experience is when Roberts, her husband, and neighbors arrived at a nearly empty Naval base seeking shelter and were turned away at gunpoint.

Deal and Lessin ask questions most mainstream news media didn't think or bother to ask. Roberts' brother, who was incarcerated in the city, tells about how inmates had no clean water or food to eat (except paper) for two days before they were relocated. Another devastating moment comes when Roberts searches her uncle's home two weeks after Katrina, only to find him decaying on the kitchen floor. Certainly, there are still some stories about Katrina that deserve to be heard and "Trouble the Water" rarely lacks deep, emotional impact.

Still, Spike Lee's four-hour, epic documentary, "When the Levees Broke," aired on HBO just a year after Katrina struck. That sort of desperately needed urgency is sorely lacking in "Trouble the Water." With a new administration in Washington, the political points that are pronounced in an epilogue before the end credits would have hit hard in 2006. In 2009, it's important, but unmistakably very old news.

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