Friday, October 9, 2009

Trouble The Water


Some folks are destined for the camera and for a greater mission. Kimberly Rivers, a 24 year old citizen of New Orleans will be unforgettable to anyone who has the opportunity to experience Trouble the Water a very fine non-fiction film that gives the viewer a close and often first-person perspective of Hurricane Katrina and the aftermath.

I read some press on this one when it was hitting the festival circuit and reviewers worked hard it seem to let folks know that this one is different. It isn't Frontline or Spike Lee. And that it is worth revisiting the tragedy of New Orleans three or four years later with filmmakers Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, Kimberly Rivers and her family.

Kimberly shot video footage on the eve of the storm recording the last moments of the old Ninth Ward on her video camera. Later she kept that camera running as often as she could as she opened her attic to neighbors watching the waters nearly cover a stop sign down below. She responds with a certainty and purpose sharing her food, water, and shelter with others. Someone in the attic wants to return to the waters. She responds: "This is not a game." In Kimberly's words and actions as well as those of some of her neighbors, we witness human condition of ordinary folks responding nobly under the direst of conditions. Whether you describe it as grace under pressure or heroism, it is undeniably something true and real that we hope we all have enough of if circumstances like a levee break were to occur to us as well.

Later the Deal/Lessin film crew catch up with them about a week later with one of the opening shots in the Trouble. Two weeks later the crew follows Kimberly, Scott and Brian, a recovering addict they have bonded with as they return to Ninth Ward. They return to the neighborhood to find relations decomposing in houses and reconstruct their flight from the city for the cameras.

I believe this is one of the best non-fiction film in years. The viewer gets the opportunity to experience the world of Kimberly and her husband Scott, the world of poor, struggling African-Americans. As Deal points out in the Q & A at the Roger Ebert Film Festival after a screening, this a story and these are the kinds of people we don't often get to see in a movie like this. Deal and Lessin let Kimberly and Scott show and tell their own story story but the filmmakers also make some very judicious choices in broadcast clips to create a contrapuntal frame of reference between the Katrina we saw on television and the one these fine folks endured through troubled waters both during and after the storm.
posted by well-executed buffet at 9:08 PM
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