When the Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts
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Actor: Sam Pollard, Spike LeeBrand: HBO Home Video
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 256 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2006-12-19
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: 93973
Studio: HBO Home Video
Product features:
- One year after Hurricane Katrina decimated New Orleans, director Spike Lee presents a four-hour, four-part chronicle recounting, through words and images, one of our country's most profound natural disasters. In addition to revisiting the hours leading up to the arrival of Katrina, a Category 5 hurricane before it hit the coast of Louisiana, When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts tells the
DVD Reviews of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts
DVD Review: A masterpiece from Spike Lee
Summary: 5 Stars
Spike Lee's monumental six hour WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE is an enthralling account of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina, which left much of New Orleans under water in late August 2005. Called a Requiem in Four Acts (plus a 105 minute Epilogue), the HBO miniseries is a heartbreaking and angry blend of documentary footage of the flood damage, attack on the federal government for not being in New Orleans in timely fashion, and oral history by proud survivors.
Each act is about an hour long. Act One begins with the hurricane starting on August 28, 2005. I played this hour with Mr. Lee's audio commentary, which seems to blame the federal government in general and President George Bush specifically for not being in New Orleans. "He didn't give a [damn]," replies Spike. We get information on two previous Gulf States hurricanes, one in 1927 and Betsy in 1965. Mr. Lee shows CNN and BBC footage of newspeople and the flood damage, then asks where our own federal government and FEMA were. A black male mayor and a white woman governor hate each other's guts as people die. Sean Penn is one of the heroes of this miniseries, helping rescue dozens of people from filthy water. Spike again (and his commentary is very heavy-handed and angry) wants to know why Bush and no one in his cabinet showed up in New Orleans for a full week? According to Mr. Lee, the Canadian Mounties came down from Vancouver quicker than Bush and company did. When Spike stops talking and ranting against our government, his survivors have powerful and sad tales to tell of fleeing the devastation, then trying to get back to their homes, as we watch the flood devastation. The hour ends with evacuees in the hot and smelly Super Dome.
Act Two has evacuees still in the Super Dome or the Convention Center with no food or water or toilets. The National Guard arrives and threatens to shoot innocent Americans trying to get back to their home ruins. The mayor of New Orleans is ineffectual, and the pit bull governor supports the National Guard. Spike Lee shakes his head aurally on the audio commentary: "Even in the 21st Century, even in America, this is still happening." There is brilliant helicopter footage of the devastation, but it is from the BBC, not our own government. Mr. Lee proves with documentary footage that George Bush knew from the Weather Service of a probable hurricane about to hit New Orleans a day after August 27th, but it took him TWELVE DAYS to get down to the flood site. "He just didn't give a [damn]," comments Spike again. He then adds that if the federal government really did not know what was going on or what to do, maybe they were not qualified to hold their jobs. The National Guard again tried to kill looters and other flood victims, until the Army showed up: "Put those guns down. These are American citizens." Act Two ends with a montage of dead bodies.
I played Acts Three and Four without Spike Lee's unnecessary commentary relentlessly attacking the federal government. The miniseries plays much more effectively with the flood survivors themselves asking where the federal government, particularly FEMA, was. People are migrating to Arkansas, Texas, and Tennessee, but especially Houston, Texas. 150,000 people there were homeless and jobless. Vice President Cheney comes down to New Orleans and is told to go [hang] himself; it takes two full weeks for Bush to get on national TV. Worst of all is Barbara Bush in a Houston homeless shelter; she insensitively suggests that maybe the survivors are better off now than in poverty level New Orleans. She hangs herself verbally with no assistance from Spike Lee. He lets survivors eloquently tell their own stories: "We aren't refugees, we are American citizens." FEMA is a national joke and disgrace. The people are helping themselves without federal government help, so maybe FEMA and other government agencies should be abolished, survivors suggest. As a black woman revisits the ruins of a house she has lived in all her life, there is the theme of rebuilding New Orleans "because it is our home and where everything we love is." Two of those things are music and cultural rituals. A psychiatrist speaks about an increase in suicides and suicidal thoughts among his patients. A woman holds up a photo of a five year old girl. Her sad funeral ends Act Three of WHEN THE LEVEES RISE.
I also played Act Four without Spike Lee's unnecessary and shrill commentary. We open with music--a band and Mardi Gras, the spirit to celebrate is still in New Orleans. Three or four months are going by, and the survivors complain that the federal government is just sitting on their thumbs. A student learns his mom died in a house that was not searched, and the body was not buried for two months. Survivors want to know repeatedly why we can fight a war in Iraq, but not give water or power to our own country. Trailers sit empty in a trailer yard, waiting months for the federal government to give them to homeless people. Worst of all are insurance companies that people have been paying premiums to for years. They argue with survivors--benefits for hurricanes, but none for flooding, and this is flooding. Nasty real estate companies want to buy up the land and bulldoze the ruined homes that owners want to rebuild. The Army Corps of Engineers arrives, but isn't sure what to do. Survivors say to look at what The Netherlands did to prevent a similar flooding. Act 4 ends with sunset over the Mississippi River, then ten minutes of portraits of people alphabetically as a sort of people cast list. "Walking Through New Orleans" plays on the soundtrack. Terence Blanchard did the haunting trumpet and piano score for the whole movie. The film editors are Geeta Ghanbhir and Nancy Novack, supervised by Sam Pollard. They did a mammoth and magnificent job of combining oral history and documentary footage. WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE may be Spike Lee's crowning achievement, though he is too quick to blame the federal government for everything bad; I'd love to hear what Bush and Cheney have to say.
For DVD, Mr. Lee has added a 105 minute Act 5 Epilogue. It is mostly oral history (blessedly without audio commentary) of where everyone was on August 28, 2005 and what they did in the days that followed this terrible New Orleans flood. They range from actor Sean Penn (a real hero) to pastors and authors, lawyers and students, engineers and a medical examiner. They are all backed by Terence Blanchard's trumpet and piano music score. There was rampant police brutality, especially white against black, in the days that followed. Penn talks powerfully of rescuing dozens of people in muddy water because the federal government had not shown up yet. If FEMA could not figure out how to mobilize, the survivors rationalize, then maybe we don't need FEMA. That's a sobering thought, the federal government saying that maybe the survivors are better off without our interference. An engineer tries to explain what happened, why, and how to try and prevent it again in the future. We hear from a chef, a doctor, and musicians. A white trial lawyer sends out 7,000 claims to people he is trying to help, only to realize that a sizeable number of the people cannot read. And through it all, FEMA is an ineffectual joke. The city will survive and rebuild without federal government help. Fade out on a rapper at the gate to a cemetery.
I did not play it, but this enthralling 3-disk DVD of Spike Lee's WHEN THE LEVEES BROKE also features something called WATER IS RISING. It is described as blending a gallery of photos with music by Terence Blanchard. I commend this magnificent HBO miniseries to your rental and sales attention. It will take you three nights, but is well worth that much time.
Description of When the Levees Broke: A Requiem In Four Acts
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