When The Levees Broke

Watching the documentary When The Levees Broke truly opened my eyes to everything that went down there when Katrina happened. There was so much that I didn't know and the way it was presented completely blew me away.

The most heartbreaking story to me probably would have to be the one's that involved FEMA looking for the dead bodies in the houses. One particular one was a fellow who left and his mom stayed. After the storm, the man couldn't contact or find out where his mom is at all. He still had hope that she was alive. Finally, the houses started to get searched, but his mom's house was marked that there were no dead bodies found it that house. They CLAIMED that the searched the house thoroughly enough to determine that no one died in that house. The man still could not  find away to find his mom so he goes to New Orleans and goes into the house. Next thing you know, he finds his mothers dead body underneath a refrigerator that fell on top of her. How horrible is that. Not only does he find his own mother's dead body, but he finds it after the government stated that there was no dead body in there. Were they being lazy and just didn't want to search the house? Did they truly not care? Were the searches just too dumb to find someone that a civilian found so simply? The whole time that segment was being shown I literally was jaw dropped. I couldn't believe what I was seeing.

There was so much in this movie that I now feel like a have a bigger idea of what was going on than before. I found this documentary to be exceptional and recommend it to anyone. My only thing about the film that I thought was a little heavy, was Spike Lee's one sided view on the subject. I felt he was too focused on making all of New Orleans the victim. Not to say I oppose to this view, but there is a little more to the story then just "Oh poor New Orleans." Like the fact that some stayed in New Orleans just because of their pride. I understand if you can't leave to possible money issues, but this city pride is a little much for me. I understand having pride in your city, but you can't get a warning like this and state "I'M NOT LEAVING, THIS PLACE IS MY HOME!" and then have the event happen and now be like "I CAN'T BELIEVE THIS HAPPENED AND NOW NO ONE IS COMING TO HELP ME!" without coming off as a whiner. I'm not saying this is how I viewed everyone from New Orleans who got affected, but in some cases I was just thinking to myself, "Well......maybe you should have left." Other than that, this film was well put together and well presented.