When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

USA 2006 / 240min. (Two parts, each 120mins)
Director Spike Lee

New Orleans – The Big Easy and The City that Care Forgot took on an entirely new meaning when on August the 29th 2005, a Category 5 hurricane, Hurricane Katrina hit, unleashing a calamity of unthinkable proportions.

Spike Lee, the director of Do The Right Thing and Malcolm X turned his hand to documentary and delivered his magnum opus and ode to New Orleans, confirming his position as one of the master storytellers of his generation. When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in IV Parts is part epic fable, part cinematic thriller replete with its own blood-rushing cataclysmic disaster, heroes, villains and scapegoats.

The opening seconds of the film take in a magnificent aerial view of New Orleans, accompanied by Louis Armstrong singing “Do You Know What it Means to Miss New Orleans” and you know you’re in for something special.

From the beginning, the story engages with the multitude of testimonies from people who left and people who stayed as they describe the moments and the hours leading to the impending disaster.

The build up is as intense as it is unbearable. Katrina hits, then moves East but then the levees broke…New Orleans, a city 6 feet below sea level relived its nightmare of 1965 when Hurricane Betsy hit, instigating a flood. Once again those left behind watched in despair and fought for survival as their beloved city succumbed to rising waters.

What caused the flooding? Was it nature’s fury or human folly?

Questions about faulty engineering within the levees were raised. The painful urban myth that the levees had been intentionally breached after Hurricane Betsy hit, allowing flood waters to penetrate the lower wards in order to save the more expensive lake-side real estate was revived. Accusations of bigotry started to fly.

The historical concerns and dissatisfaction about Louisiana’s high poverty levels and the lack of investment in its economic and educational infra-structure became high points of discussion by angry black leaders in the news.

The public continued to express its disillusionment with an administration that seemed to prioritise spending on an unpopular war above the basic needs of its own people. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” says hip-hop superstar Kanye West clumsily, in a moment of unscripted valour, during a live concert fundraiser on NBC — saying what people were thinking and shouting in the streets but did not dare utter on prime national TV.

Whilst the city drowned, the State and Federal governments engaged in a pedantic battle over how to apply resources. The post disaster response from the Federal Government was feeble and stilted and forced individuals to take matters in their own hands.

Celebrities and ordinary folk lay bare their stories. The picture that would later emerge would be one of heroes and saints worthy of a modern-day allegory.

Rev. Willie Walker Jr of the Noah’s Ark Church lived up to the name of his congregation when he got on a boat and tried to find the 250 school children who had been trapped.

Hollywood actor Sean Penn personally attempted to ferry the stranded residents.

The US Coastguard lifeguards worked up to 40 hours at a time.

Nameless thousands continued to wade barefoot through rising waters, sludge, mud and the smell of death as they carried babies, the elderly and the sick on their backs and to safety. They were imbued with the spirit of a people who had lived a legacy of surviving against the odds.

Spike’s previous dramatic features have dealt with social issues faced by African Americans.

When the Levees Broke, is one of his most ambitious and potent productions, plays on that theme. But beyond that, it is also a forceful reminder to politicians, government agencies, town planners and engineers that some disasters are preventable and of how not to behave when disaster strikes.—Ewa Bigio

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