Trouble the Water

Directed by Tia Lessin, Carl Deal

Trouble the Water re-energizes the DIY aesthetic adopted in the name of "realism" for big-budget escapism like Cloverfield and Diary of the Dead, with two important exceptions. Firstly it's non-fiction, a view of an impossibly immense disaster from the perspective of those whose lives Hurricane Katrina most radically affected. Secondly (more importantly?) its main characters are antitheses to the depthless, target market-researched twenty-somethings of those supernatural disaster films.

Introduced as the filmmakers met them while attempting an entirely different Katrina doc, Kim and Scott Roberts command Trouble the Water's narrative long after the waters recede from their Ninth Ward neighborhood – unlike those blockbuster protags, their lives extend beyond their films' first and last monster attacks. Kim is particularly charismatic, musing in her enchanting New Orleans accent, "maybe I'm gon’ sell it to some white people" while knowingly collecting footage of her block before the storm. Trees swaying in the gathering winds haven't spelled doom so plainly since Kurosawa's Throne of Blood.

Beyond the opener's shocking storm footage, Trouble the Water keeps its disaster voyeurism minimal (national news footage serves mostly as depressing propagandistic counterpoint to lived reality) focusing instead on its main characters' relentless optimism. Kim, Scott and another Katrina refugee Brian pack enough charm and personal redemption to make the shift in scope entirely successful. Brian, a recovering addict, is strikingly forthcoming with forgiveness, thanking indifferent and ineffectual would-be re-builders stationed in and around the Ninth Ward.
Meanwhile, Kim's discovery of her old rap EP and impromptu performance is an incredibly eloquent scene, proving the survival of New Orleans' rich vernacular culture despite the indifferent city government's blind promotion of postcard-ready tourism as a means to top-down reconstruction. If T.I. and Lil Wayne hadn't already convinced you that Southern rap is an art form, Kim's music (recorded under the name Black Kold Madina) certainly will. The notion of music and hardship providing a motor and fuel for personal re-making (Kim and Scott were both drug dealers before Katrina) recalls Hustle and Flow with more empowering sexual politics.

Kim's impassioned rap also serves as a shorthand articulation of Trouble the Water's complete immersion in America's frequently ignored class issues. As Scott states casually while walking in his mud-caked neighborhood, "the hood's always last to be fixed." Following the film's bottom-up aesthetics though, it makes sense that Kim and Scott will have to do the fixing themselves. At film's end their journey is just beginning, with Kim pouring herself completely into her rap career, while Scott works at rebuilding homes in New Orleans. It's not the cathartic finale of your average monster movie, but it's about the happiest conclusion to be extracted from this never-ending disaster scenario.

A similar version of this review appears in The L Magazine, and can be read here.