I just happened upon the middle of Spike Lee’s documentary “When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts” , which is on HBO (it is an HBO film, I think). I was transfixed, and horrified, all over again. I’ve set the system to record the next showing of all four acts in their entirety, and it is at the top of my viewing priorities. If you have not seen it, I recommend it, from the 20 minutes I’ve seen so far alone. Spike Lee looks to have done an excellent job. It is a documentary, to be sure, with the faces and voices of the people affected and involved on camera a great deal of the time, and it is also definitely a Spike Lee film in terms of look and feel and, of course, Terrence Blanchard’s music. See the synopsis (along with interviews with Lee) on HBO’s site here. Extract:
“New Orleans is fighting for its life,” says Lee. “These are not people who will disappear quietly – they’re accustomed to hardship and slights, and they’ll fight for New Orleans. This film will showcase the struggle for New Orleans by focusing on the profound loss, as well as the indomitable spirit of New Orleaneans.”
The first thing that springs to mind (other than the thoughts inspired by the content itself, most of which I am sure you’ve had yourself) is: Why is this not being shown in every movie theatre in the country? Documentaries have come back, right? We’ve all gone to see Michael Moore’s cleverly edited and scripted documentaries on various political issues. We’ve gone to see the even more cleverly edited and (oh yes) carefully scripted documentary “The March of the Penguins” and came away weeping at the thought that in 50 years, all that may be gone…. etc, etc. Should we not all be turning out in numbers to see this, showing events where actual human beings were lost and abandoned, in huge numbers? Families destroyed, lives torn assunder? Where the heart of so much of our culture was destroyed? If not, why not? I don’t care that it is 4 hours long. That’s not a good enough argument.
-cvj
a cornellian :- Some good reasons among the many, I’m sure….. (1) yes, (2) yes, (3) yes.
-cvj
note, i have not seen it, so i’m going to go from your descriptions in my babbling.
I think that there are different dynamics going on here. Penguins are cute and you didn’t go see Moore’s films to learn anything or to seriously question your political views, you went to either affirm your ritgious outrage or to become ritgously outraged at him. People need a good reason to want to be “…horrified, all over again.”
The more apt comparison is the rash of 9/11 films/specials, and cnn replaying thier news tape from the day (that one bothers me alot…I grew up just north ot NYC and came home from school just in time to see one of the towers fall….that is one clip i’m quite content to never see again.)
I think the reasons are :
1) 9/11 is more politically convient (you can’t scare the most of the country with hurricanes, and a “War on Hurricans” would sound stupid) and due to this resonates with alot more people
2) Katrina is very politcally inconvenient due to the great many failures involved
3) 9/11 killed rich people, katrina killed poor people (it is plausable that there is also a racial issue here, but i do not now the actual statistics enough to say)
.
Yes, it is in the HBO links about how the show came to be. My point is that iit is bizarre to me that semi-fictional documentaries about penguins make to theatre release, and a movie like this is not available there.
I’m sure it wil have a second life with special showings of the DVD in privately rented theatres, etc…. but I just see this as a missed opportunity to come together as a nation, on the one hand, and on the other, to maybe try to do something good by making a portion of the tickets go to help the people affected.
-cvj
On a recent road trip, I caught an interview with Spike on NPR about this documentary which piqued my interest. Apparently, Spike developed it as an HBO thing — going into theaters was not his intent.
I then managed to catch the final two hours in a hotel in Des Moines (passing through en route from Santa Fe to Ann Arbor). It was amazing; I really regret missing the first two hours. Even though it wasn’t developed with theater showing in mind, I would certainly pay to see it in a good theater (perhaps with an intermission … 4 hours is a LONG time to sit in typical movie theater seats). I don’t have HBO at home, but will try to get the first two hours via netflix when it finally ends up on DVD.