Trouble the Water Issue #37

By Erin DeJesus
Published: September 1st, 2008 | 9:55am

Hurricane Katrina’s tragedy has already been memorialized on film, most notably in Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke. But Trouble the Water has one thing other Katrina documentaries do not: a streetwise, charismatic — and real — female narrator.

Kimberly Rivers Roberts lives in New Orleans’ Ninth Ward, on a street where neighbors are considered family. As Katrina nears, the city orders a mandatory evacuation but organizes no public transportation. Roberts and her husband Scott are among those left behind — “We couldn’t afford the luxury” to leave, she says. While trapped in the Ward, Roberts uses her camcorder to film the neighborhood both pre-Katrina (to “show the world we have a world”) and during the deluge.

Directors Carl Deal and Tia Lessin juxtapose Roberts’ film with news reports and professional post-storm footage. The contrasts are jarring, and, in parts, infuriating. As Katrina hits, a tanned President Bush gives pep talks from an Arizonan resort; Roberts crouches in her cramped attic as the Industrial Canal levee, three blocks away, breaks and floods her home. While gauging the aftermath, a Good Morning America reporter wonders how Katrina will affect gas prices; cut to Roberts entering a condemned home only to discover her uncle’s body. The film is part survival story, part disaster movie, and part social commentary from Katrina’s front lines. But Roberts is its undisputed star; as an aspiring rapper, her talent with words touches on issues like race, social status, and government indifference on a deeply human level. This account of Katrina’s damage — Roberts’ account — is achingly real.

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