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'Trouble the Water' an engrossing documentary about Hurricane Katrina

Submitted by SHNS on Tue, 09/09/2008 - 13:58

By now almost everyone knows that the U.S. government monumentally failed the citizens of New Orleans during and after Hurricane Katrina. Is there more to be said about this national catastrophe? Yes, definitely, as the engrossing documentary "Trouble the Water" shows in just about every frame."Trouble," which won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival, takes a very personal look at the chaos in New Orleans in the fall of 2005. Kimberly Roberts, a 24-year-old wannabe rap singer living in the badly hit Ninth Ward, had just bought a secondhand video camera when news broke of the impending hurricane. With the instincts of a reporter, she roamed her neighborhood in the eerie stillness right before the streets flooded and people were forced out of their homes, shooting video along the way.Carl Deal, a producer on Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11" and "Bowling for Columbine," and his filmmaking partner, Tia Lessin, met Roberts when the two came to Louisiana to work on a different documentary. They wisely switched gears when Roberts, who isn't shy, showed them some of her raw footage. Deal and Lessin are credited as directors, but the movie is really Roberts' show.Lacking transportation out of the city, she and her husband, Scott Roberts, hunker down in their house as long as they can. Scenes of them trapped in their attic are juxtaposed with those of President Bush saying he was "very impressed" with what the beleaguered Michael Brown, then the FEMA director, was doing.News clips of the president and Brown sounding clueless are awfully familiar. Spike Lee definitively roasted them in his documentary "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts."But every time you feel as if "Trouble the Water" is going over too-familiar ground, there comes Kimberly Roberts to jar you with her candidness. Ultimately made to leave her home, she is allowed back in to grab a few personal items. She takes a faded photograph of a young woman off the wall and begins kissing it. Her husband holds the camera as she explains that the picture is of her mother, who died of AIDS when Kimberly was 13.The couple is surrounded by death. They smell a body decomposing in a nearby house, but are unable to get the authorities to remove it. On the sidewalk is a drowned dog that appears to be petrified in the water."Trouble the Water" takes on a "Wizard of Oz" feel as the Robertses secure a van and pick up a friend from the neighborhood, and they all head for Memphis, Tenn., where Kimberly's cousin has opened his house to them. They are all hoping for a new beginning -- for Kimberly that means landing a recording contract -- and by this time you want that for them, too.One caveat: Almost the entire movie was shot with a jumpy handheld camera, and the result may induce nausea.Not rated.90 minutes.(E-mail Ruthe Stein at rstein(at)sfchronicle.com.)(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)