Customer Reviews

When the Levees Broke

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4 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

I would have given this documentary 5 stars if wasn't so long. A good editor could have reduced it by an hour, thus eliminating much of the repetition. Otherwise excellent.

Spike Lee is a genius period. He gets out of the way and lets people's words and pictures tell the story and does away with any voiceover narration. The DVD set is divided into four acts with a fifth bonus act updating the various survivors' lives.

The basic style is backlit portrait framing of the person speaking and just letting them go. This succeeds because of fantastic editing in piecing together all these disparate people's stories.

It's also great that Lee uses outside news coverage (mainly the BBC's) as well as local and CNN's clips. It gives a far better perspective on how the media covered the story. The images though will be burned into your skull especially of dead bodies just lying (or floating) on streets, freeway interchanges or just sitting in chairs next to the Superdome.

One of the acts mainly focuses on the levees themselves and what wasn't done in years past and what should be done to prevent them breaking again. Hearing engineers talk about the levees and the mistakes the Corps of Engineers made over 40 years (since the previous hurrcane, Betsy, hit NOLA in '65) and how the Netherlands gets it right should put America to shame.

The "Water is Rising" on the bonus DVD is just still pics set to a jazz soundtrack but is definitely worth viewing as they have just as strong an impact.

This DVD set should be required viewing by every single citizen of the USA so that everything is done to help rebuild one of the most vibrant cities in their nation.