When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts

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What’s the Story?

Director Spike Lee's documentary, WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE: A REQUIEM IN FOUR ACTS, is a harrowing, vivid documentation of the lives of the people affected by Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans. Over four hours, the film uses home video footage, news broadcasts, and interviews with regular people, actors, politicians, and musicians to piece together a living history of the hurricane and the flood caused by inadequate levees and poor government response. There's the man who struggled to get his elderly mom to the Superdome only to watch her die in the heat waiting for buses to arrive. There's the mother who must bury her little girl. There's the police chief, so overwhelmed with his own grief and fear about the safety of his own daughter, who tells people that babies are being raped in the Superdome. Because this is a Spike Lee joint, this documentary is also incendiary, sharing the theories of the city's largely African-American population that the government destroyed the levees in the poor black neighborhood of the Lower Ninth Ward to save richer neighborhoods. It also shares the city's rich African-American history and explains how traumatic it is for African Americans to be torn from their home after generations of their families were ripped apart by slavery.

Is It Any Good?

Lee has created a masterpiece of journalism. When the Levees Broke is an undeniably American story that asks and begs: Why was the response so shamefully slow? At one point, police chief Eddie Compass, struck by the suffering around him days after the flood, says, "I need someone to get me a cruise boat or some type of boat, a cruise ship or some type of ship that I can put my people on, that I can give my people some comfort, so I can help my people."

In answering the question of the year, Lee spares no one, up to and including the president, New Orleans' mayor, and a culture that abandoned the poor, black people of New Orleans long before Katrina hit. This is challenging viewing, but it's also hopeful, and full of the power of the human spirit, laced with some wonderful musical performances and a deep faith in the power of the people of New Orleans to come back.