"Trouble the Water" (Documentary) (2009) - Movie Review

Kimberly Rivers strolls down the street on a calm and collected day in the Ninth Ward, New Orleans. There are few kids on the street and she asks them whether they are afraid of storm and one says it is just water while another kid challenges the blind audacity of the girl saying when the eight feet water come up, it washes down everything. Then down the road at the entrance of the house is another middle aged lean man dressed up being drugged up. Kimberly wakes him up and asks to go inside as the Hurricane Katrina is coming to hit. She is staying with her husband Scott Roberts as evacuation is a luxury they cannot afford as she says it. This is their story and the people they survived along in the merciless force of nature which amplified into a never ending destruction calamity by the government which failed to provide the people in need.

The documentary is not dependent on the flurry of vocal mistakes former President George W. Bush commits. It is on the recitation of a tough woman with her husband and friends seeing their government’s operation becoming useless. We are taken down through the attic in which Kimberly and others refuged for shelter. Holding their breaths, struggling through the food supply and looking for a rescue which never arrives. They survive the hurricane but the real damage is when it got over. With a street left untreated and Kimberly’s Uncle (the stoned out man in the start) died in the house decomposed for two weeks. No one has cleared out the area. The Ninth Ward becomes a sad stature of a died down streets.

The camcorder Kimberly handles could have been a cheap video alert the current youtube videos have become but it is a documentation. The documentation made by her believed that the things are going to go bad and possibly lose her life through it. She wanted that to be the sign off and in that she shows other people, trapped and terrified. Worried by the wait they had to make and see the bravery of heroes like Larry who worked consecutively in the water to bring the people from different buildings to the attic of higher ground.

Kimberly narrates along with the video making every word descriptive and collects the position the people of city are in. Through the film we learn she is an aspiring artist who has no home and music in town. While they knew the people in the street, the situation combines them with friends they had problems and began to form a bond through the disaster. One such is Brian Nobles and his FEMA application never gets through because of no proof that he lived in New Orleans. It is not a easy ride for the couple as their check never got through after applying before two weeks. (Finally they do get it in later time)

The film mingles the footage and their return to their homes after two weeks. Homes buried in the dirt and bodies hiding around, it is the post apocalyptic situation the Hollywood fantasized. There have been many other worst calamities happen in the other parts of the world which includes the Indian Ocean Tsunami in 2004 and the devastation had been horrific than this but this is a film about the aftermath which went wrong and the people with no hope keep themselves pushing ahead for the next day.

“Trouble the Water” in its first forty-five minutes is the powerful at its most. The terrorizing thing to see the water hitting the window and giving the grinning unwelcome and the attic full of people trying to hold it together. Kimberly constantly invites people around and offers food and tough voice. And when they return, they revisit the places they went through. From attic to a naval base where they were literally aimed at gunpoint to leave the premise to safeguard the military orders and then to the school to lay some place. They have created a self awareness of the patriotism fed upon. The honest thing to do is join the army and the intent is good what it achieves is becoming a pawn for someone else’s mistake move. When the military needed domestically, they were asked to stay put and the people cry as the real war is in New Orleans.

Kimberly and Scott are the children of destitute and got pushed in to the world of drugs for survival. They make it out hard and the film does a fair portrayal. She even says to couple of grandma’s she rescued that they do not know the real Kim before the storm. So it may be but the good thing in the worst calamity is that they begin a start. A fresh and clean start. They swear to not return again as the picture of the city is sickening. Yet they come back as if they are tied down to the place by the people they acquainted. The tourist places are renovated but there is not plans for the other parts of this city. What brings the question is, was it ever been cared than the tourist place? “Trouble the Water” tells those through these people.