A bridge over troubled water?

We can all rest easy now ‘-‘- the winds that brought Hurricane Katrina have long since died away. The floodwaters have subsided, the levees have been rebuilt and the victims have either returned to their homes or moved on with their lives. By and large, we’ve all swept the natural disaster under that big national rug of things that went horribly wrong during the last administration and should be forever forgotten.

But Carl Deal and Tia Lessin want to make sure that that last part doesn’t stay true. With ‘Trouble the Water,’ the Oscar-nominated documentary about Hurricane Katrina and its appalling aftermath, the director-producer team hopes to remind people of the indifference suffered by the victims of the storm and shed a light on the ongoing struggles that did not get washed away when the floodwaters receded.

‘It was always our mission that this film remind people not only about what happened three and a half years ago, but what’s been happening.’ The hurricane of poverty. The hurricane of the failing public schools and the abandonment of citizens in this country,’ Lessin told an audience at Boston University after screening the film last Tuesday.

Allowing their footage to speak for itself, Deal and Lessin remind us, or maybe even enlighten us, without the glitzyness that has become a Hollywood documentary norm.

‘Trouble the Water’ follows three New Orleanians – aspiring rapper Kimberly Rivers Roberts, her husband Scott Roberts, and their neighbor Brian Nobles ‘-‘- in the days just before Katrina through their long and painful journey after their hometown was carried away by winds and water.

Though both Lessin and Deal both have worked with filmmaker Michael Moore (‘Farenheit 9/11’), you don’t watch the movie wondering if you’ve somehow been spun the facts. After all, you can’t really spin a nonexistent FEMA reimbursement check, a frantic 911-call for help that won’t come or the blatant unpreparedness (or was it indifference?) of an entire nation. ‘Trouble the Water’ hits too close too home – literally. Witnessing Kimberly, Scott and Brian experience wrongs on our justice-for-all American soil is devastating. It is shocking to see the lack of organized aid for Katrina’s victims first-hand and the film makes it impossible to call it anything but government unconcern.

However, above the government outrage is a story of bare bones survival. Its message is wrapped up in the spirit of brotherhood that the forgotten-about citizens of New Orleans were forced to erect in order to pull themselves out of the troubled waters that nearly swept them away. What begins as a kind of horror film ‘-‘- with Kimberly’s shaky home looming in the storm ‘-‘- ends with a story of a family overcoming odds, coming to terms with inevitable change and fighting for survival. Yet for the Roberts, Nobles, and all the residents of New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, the fight is long from over.

‘Right now, Katrina is still happening. It’s not just a hurricane that came with water and debris and all this, it also come with crime. It also come with disappointments,’ Nobles, who also attended the screening, told the crowd.

These disappointments that Nobles and the directors discussed were rooted in a lack of appropriated attention to a region that was struggling before the worst national disaster in U.S. history devastated what little was there to begin with. While Bourbon Street got rebuilt promptly to cash out on that famous New Orleans tourism, the disadvantaged Ninth Ward has been entirely left behind.

‘We need to get this movie out to more and more people. We need our government to help us more. Go online and tell them to help the Ninth Ward. We need help. We need more than prayer,’ Nobles said.