Society - When The Levees Broke

Spike Lees When the Levees Broke is a television milestone that ranks with Edward R. Murrows Harvest of Shame as an unflinching document of a national disgrace. Over the course of four hour-long acts (plus, for this DVD, a newly filmed fifth act), Lee chronicles the devastation wrought not just by 2005s Hurricane Katrina but also by ill-prepared, inefficient, and seemingly indifferent federal, state, and local officials, who fiddled while New Orleans drowned. As Lee rightly surmised, when trying to wrap ones mind around the enormity of the Katrina disaster and its aftermath, sound bites on the evening news and partisan sniping on talk shows just wouldnt hold water. He meticulously compiled news footage and conducted interviews with residents, politicians, and volunteers the raw footage of citizens railing at the heavens for someone, anyone, to hear them and help them is especially affecting. There is plenty of blame to go around, according to Lee: Theres FEMA director Michael Brown on CNN, professing ignorance that thousands were living like refugees inside the Superdome. Theres Condoleezza Rice shoe-shopping and taking in Spam-a-Lot on Broadway while 80 percent of New Orleans was under water. And theres President Bush praising Brown with Youre doing a heck of a job, an infamous quote Lee cant resist playing back three times for its outrage value. Lees voice can be heard off camera during interviews, but he does not inject himself into the proceedings.