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Trouble the Water
Film Review by Kam Williams
Shocking Katrina Documentary Created from Real-Time, Home Movies
Shot by Storm Victim
 On
August 28, 2005, with Hurricane Katrina bearing down on the New Orleans,
Scott and Kimberly Rivers Roberts made the fateful decision to weather
the storm instead of evacuate. Armed with a video camera, Kim started
wandering around their Lower Ninth Ward neighborhood, interviewing
friends and relatives who had also chosen to stay in the city.
It is readily apparent from watching the pre-landfall footage that none
of them anticipated the dire struggle for survival which was about to
unfold. Not only did they expect the levees to hold like they had for
every storm since the Great Flood of 1927, but they had no reason to
suspect they’d be utterly abandoned by local, state and federal
authorities in the event of a massive natural disaster.
But as we all know, that’s precisely what happened, and thousands of
suddenly-homeless citizens ended up stranded for days on end without any
sustenance. They were forced to fend for themselves during a
triple-digit heat wave, while awaiting the proverbial cavalry which
never arrived.
Trouble the Water is an eye-opening documentary, which enables
the audience to be a fly on the crumbling levee walls as Kim and her
husband shift from carefree observers into survival mode. In virtually
the blink of an eye, the atmosphere goes from ominous to desperate as
the water level rises so precipitously that no one has a chance to make
a dash for higher ground on foot.
Although the Roberts lived to tell the tale, the same can’t be said for
all the subjects of their home movie. For example, the camera captures
the shock and dismay in their eyes two weeks after the hurricane passed,
when they enter the house of Kim’s uncle, who had been interviewed
earlier, only to find his decomposing corpse lying in the living room.
Other horror stories follow, such as the sight of an acquaintance’s
aging mother whose body had been left behind with dozens of other
patients in a hospital now turned morgue.
Also effectively chronicled is the constant frustration the couple
encountered in dealing with FEMA bureaucrats who had the nerve to ask
for documents obviously washed away. No wonder so many of the victims
ended up broke, depressed, unemployed and no longer able to trust their
own government.
There’s a telling scene towards the end of the picture, where a woman
talks about how she’s counseled her son who wants to enter the military.
“You’re not going to fight for a country that doesn’t give a damn about
you,” she declares matter-of-factly. “No way!”
Raw, unfiltered and expletive-laced, but a brutally-honest flick
guaranteed to give you an unsanitized picture of what life was like for
the least fortunate folks in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.
Unrated
Running time: 96 minutes
Studio: Zeitgeist Films
To see a trailer of Trouble the Water, visit:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cq426VjZD1E
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Lloyd Kam Williams
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 Lloyd
Kam Williams is a syndicated film and book critic who
writes for 100+ publications around the U.S. and Canada. He is a member of
the African-American Film Critics Association, the New York Film Critics
Online, the NAACP Image Awards Nominating Committee, and Rotten Tomatoes. In
addition to a BA in Black Studies from Cornell, he has an MA in English from
Brown, an MBA from The Wharton School, and a JD from Boston University. Kam
lives in Princeton, NJ with his wife and son.
IMDiversity.com is committed to presenting diverse points of view.
However, the viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of
the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or
employees at IMD.
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