Must See Film
Added 10/27/2009
Trouble the Water is a MUST SEE FILM! I have viewed it many times and have shown it many friends and family members. Every single person I share this film with walks away changed. The in-time footage is breathtaking, the courage and kindness of the people during and after the storm is inspiring and the response of the government to this disaster is eye-opening! After watching Trouble the Water, you may be writing a check for the good people of New Orleans as I did, or at least you will be calling your friends and insisting they watch! Excellent film! Five Stars!
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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The most honest Katrina story so far...
Added 10/24/2009
With all due respect for Spike Lee's magnificent "When the Levees Broke", directors Tia Lessin & Carl Deal have produced an account of Katrina that is at once profound and exhilarating in it's straightforwardness. They had not set out to make the final film; it was when they met Kimberly and Scott Roberts that their idea took a different turn. The Roberts' home video footage during the storm and its aftermath is amazing and quite disturbing. Kim does the most talking here, articulating the horrors and sadness without giving in to despair nor noticeable frustration. She speaks intelligently and sensibly, giving a first-hand account of survival. Kim spares no denial of the crime, drugs and poverty, but provides honest and sensitive comments regarding government ambivalence and pure ignorance. One must see the film to genuinely feel the pain. Many reviewers have already gone into detail about elements of the film, so I'll simply recommend this film highly. DVD extras are plentiful; lots of generous interviews and discussions. The directors have presented a powerful documentary, but I have no end of admiration for the Roberts' contribution. Not enough was said about their friend, Larry, a true hero.
2 out of 2 people found this helpful.
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The fight down there to make things right is not done!
Added 10/24/2009
If you have not seen "Trouble the Water" directed and produced by Tia Lessin and Carl Deal - Rent or buy it today. It pisses you off and inspires you at the same time. We can not forget the people in New Orleans...the fight down there to make things right is not done! What impressed me the most about this film is the commitment the makers of the film had to tell the truth through their entire experience. It was brave not just from a reality stand point...but from a personal stand point. Whenever you hear another human being so clearly tell the truth in the now - It humbly empowers us to do the same.
Trouble the Water
1 out of 1 people found this helpful.
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May fall short for students of Katrina -- and fine documentaries, too.
Added 9/22/2009
Perhaps it is unfair. One week before viewing this documentary, I'd read -- with appreciation and wonder -- Dave Egger's magisterial non-fiction work, ZEITOUN. The resonance Dave Eggers has with his character and the many moral, ethical and spiritual issues the author invokes in his narrative of a Katrina survivor -- far outweigh the significance of this film. I recognize I'm overlapping media, but there you have it.
Who could argue with the passion, decency and authenticity of Kimberly Rivers? The woman is a saint - as is her husband, as were many of her neighbors. That, sadly, does not a five-star documentary make.
The film's greatest strength is its coverage of the hours before the storm made land, in which an ordinary community was transformed, moment-by-moment, into absolute hell. The hand-held, home-video photography works well, as do the many cut-in segments to network news and obtuse statements by George Bush, who is too stupid and culpable to even mention here.
Even so -- and unlike Egger's ZEITOUN, which exposes far more than the garden-variety racism which emerged after Katrina -- this movie communicates very little new convictions or material which might grip or educate a viewer. That doesn't mean the film is a flop. Far from it.
Unlike other Katrina films, it gives you an uncanny perspective into the ways the lives of one family were transformed by a natural disaster -- but more by wholesale neglect -- and some troubling racism too -- in the shadow of the National Guard.
And then: The National Guard should not be stereotyped as a group of puppies on Michael Brown's leash. Sensible rules tend to go south in the wake of any disaster of this magnitude.
That said, TROUBLE THE WATER will satisfy those who never saw Spike Lee's marvelous WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE, although they should see the latter first. It is sad that TROUBLE THE WATER has been hyped to an offensive degree. So sorry, folks. In light of the critical acclaim it's received and of the many fine accounts of the fatalities and obscenities which lay in Katrina's wake, it is a bit of, well, a bore -- though not for the brave families who experienced it and whose lives the film recounts.
2 out of 3 people found this helpful.
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What film were they watching?
Added 9/18/2009
What film were these critics watching? What I saw was the beginning of a film
with video shot by someone who obviously didn't know one end of the
camera from the other. Maybe it got better, but I gave up on it because of all
the dizzying amateur camera work.
0 out of 6 people found this helpful.
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