In 2006, The New York Times asked Spike Lee to clarify what his ferocious and elegant documentary, "When the Levees Broke" -- and the tragedy of Hurricane Katrina it depicted -- was really about. "Politics. Ethics. Morals," he said. "This is about what this country is really going to be."
Now, timed to the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, Lee has released a new documentary -- his third on the city of New Orleans, its residents, and the collective response to a tragedy that started with a storm but didn't end once the water receded. While not officially a sequel to his two HBO projects ("When the Levees Broke" and 2010's follow-up, "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise"), Lee's latest look at the Big Easy still feels like a capper -- perhaps an epilogue, given its truncated length (88 minutes as opposed to four hours), revived themes (when a subject mentions "systemic racism," Lee plasters the words onscreen like a title card), and a cagey perspective that only comes from lived experience.
Starting and ending with poems framed as prayers, "God Takes Care of Fools and Babies" sees a lively Lee once again denounce the institutional failures before and after Katrina that led to lost lives, broken families, and cultural erasure. But now that he's seen countless more political, ethical, and moral failures in the years since -- and despite his best efforts to speak truth to power -- there's a wariness to Lee's recitations of infuriating facts and figures. Instead, he finds faith (and plenty of it) in the only aspect of America that still warrants our trust and confidence: the people.
Backing up a bit, "God Takes Care of Fools and Babies" is just one episode within the three-part Netflix series, "Katrina: Come Hell and High Water," which is itself just one in a handful of Katrina-focused documentaries premiering ahead of the 20th anniversary. There's the ABC News special report from Robin Roberts, "Hurricane Katrina: 20 Years After the Storm"; Peacock's 70-minute documentary, "Hope in High Water," which focuses on community leaders still working to improve New Orleans today; and Nat Geo's "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time," a five-episode docuseries directed by Traci A. Curry and produced by Ryan Coogler that provides a detailed, damning chronology of the hurricane and its aftermath.
"Come Hell and High Water," as a whole, is an odd amalgamation of this year's other offerings, in part because it isn't a full-on Spike Lee Joint. The first two episodes, directed by Geeta Ghandbir and Samantha Knowles, respectively, play like loosely connected context ahead of Spike's main presentation. They lay out the 2005 hurricane's impact on New Orleans in broad beats, using new interviews and old footage to construct an effective overview for those who don't remember and an affecting reminder for those who do.
Key subjects (seen in this series and others) help outline a long-familiar timeline: Lt. General Russel L. Honoré, who commanded the military's relief effort, is a frank voice in assessing the city's lack of preparation, both because of the hurricane's sudden pivot from southern Florida toward New Orleans and the government's slow, slight response in evacuating and protecting its citizens. Shelton "Shakespear" Alexander, formerly of Saint Bernard Parish, describes the difficulties faced by those who decided to leave -- the slow crawl of traffic and the gas shortage, the prohibitive expenses of travel and lodging and the immobility issues faced by older residents -- while Gralen Banks, the Hyatt's director of safety and loss prevention at the time, is one of the locals recounting the hardships faced by those who chose to "ride it out."
Robert Lynn Green Sr. is another. Near the end of the first episode, he remembers being in his home with his mother, cousin, and three granddaughters as the floodwater lifted it off its foundation and carried the entire building down the street. When, many blocks later, it slammed into a pile of debris, the "rooftop riders" (as Robert's present-day T-shirt labels them) were tossed into the raging waters. "We're clinging for our lives," he recounts. "I put my first granddaughter on the roof of the house that we landed by, turned around to get her two sisters, and she fell into the water and disappeared." Later, his mother was pulled away, too.
The painful stories only mount from there, as Episode 2, "Shelter of Last Resort," shifts focus to after the levees broke and entire neighborhoods washed away. Among the agony seen from footage inside the Superdome and outside, on the flooded streets, director Samantha Knowles makes sure to touch on moments engrained in the national consciousness, as well, like when Kanye West went on live TV and said, "George Bush doesn't care about Black people," or when the president flew over the city in Air Force One for an enraging photo opp. (When asked to talk about President Bush, Banks earns the series' first grim chuckle when he quips, "I could, but I ain't seen him. He flew over, looked out the window and said, 'Damn, that shit look bad' -- and kept going!")
"Come Hell and High Water" can also feel like a birds-eye view in its initial two hours, and for those seeking a more thorough breakdown, Curry's "Hurricane Katrina: Race Against Time" has you covered. Harrowing and exhaustive, the five-episode docuseries relies heavily on found footage from within the affected communities, as well as fresh interviews with survivors and authority figures. Curry enlists cops, firemen, the city's former director of communications, reporters, national guard members, first responders, and dozens of residents to walk viewers through exactly what happened.
Illustrating the clarity present throughout, "Race Against Time" makes good use of a map that labels each ward and neighborhood. Simple animation shows where the flooding hits, while victims relive unsettling memories of what it felt like to be there. The documentary's first few hours are almost exactly what you expect. Certain topics could've benefitted from additional time -- like "Hurricane Pam," a practice drill city officials ran through a year before Katrina hit (which wasn't taken seriously enough), and Hurricane Ruth, a very real hurricane from 1965 that prompted the Army Corps of Engineers to build bigger, better levees (which they failed to do) -- but the 44-minute episodes do help generate a gripping, vigorous, and thoroughly researched retelling.
"Race Against Time" really starts cooking when it tackles the racial bias evident in the disaster response and the way it was covered. (Insert Spike's "Systemic Racism" title card here.) One neighbor talks about how a nursing home full of stranded residents was ignored until they replaced the Black people on the roof, crying for help, with white people. More talk about being held captive in the Superdome or being turned away from neighborhoods with resources, despite being told to go there.
Much of the confusion over where to go stemmed from the media's harmful depiction of "crime" immediately following the storm. When residents went out looking for food and water their government couldn't seem to provide, they were labeled "thugs," "criminals," and "looters." Reports of martial law (that was never formally enacted) kept critical aid out of New Orleans for far too long and led to excessive violence -- including rogue militia groups who brag, on camera, about shooting human beings for fun.
It all builds to damning, bleak conclusions. Curry's finale leaps through time, from one month after Katrina to four months, to 10 years, to today. She covers the Road Home Program, a federal grant meant to help residents repair their homes, except the process was too complicated, too slow, and too discriminatory. Homeowners in predominantly Black neighborhoods weren't given as much money as their affluent white neighbors, or even enough to cover adequate repairs. That's led to an exodus of Black residents, and the ones who've managed to stay are expected to bear the brunt of future storms. History repeats itself with the new levees, constructed after Katrina, which have taller walls and reinforced support, but are already out of date -- the Army Corps of Engineers didn't account for sea level changes brought on by global warming.
"Race Against Time" begins and ends with Malik Rahim, a community organizer, who introduces the series by saying, "In order to prevent something from happening again, you have to understand why it happened in the first place. ... Katrina was a wake-up call, and we've fallen back asleep." In the documentary's closing moments, Rahim returns and says, "I guess the bottom line is it shows how much we cared then, for the most vulnerable, and how much we care right now. What makes America great is our ability to reach out and help others in a time of need."
On a systemic level, it didn't happen then, and given President Trump's utter decimation of the country's most vital infrastructures, the future doesn't look any brighter. "Race Against Time" is fueled by outrage. By reexamining how, as Rahim describes it, "a disaster became a tragedy," the blood-boiling five-hour documentary hopes to remind the public of what can happen when we devalue human lives on a societal level. In essence, that's the mission of every Katrina anniversary doc. Through the basic act of remembering, maybe we can improve on what was done before. Maybe we can prevent the next tragedy. Maybe there won't be another Katrina, there will just be more storms.
But that's what makes Spike's entry so fascinating. In addition to the stylistic flourishes (there are plenty of big, bold captions, and a number of interviews include Lee's voice shouting from behind the camera), there's an underlying current of skepticism. He already made his version of "Race Against Time" with "When the Levees Broke." Does he still believe a good shaming can rattle America's powers that be, especially in a political era where officeholders contort facts to flatter our delusional dictator? Is righteous anger still a viable path toward change? Can truth still penetrate the public space? Did his documentary achieve what he hoped it would? How? For whom?
These are the questions lingering around "God Takes Care of Fools and Babies," a title Lee takes from an interview conducted with the actor and New Orleans resident Wendell Pierce, whose chosen idiom originally evolved from a Bible passage (Psalm 116:6). How apt, given Lee's Katrina trilogy started with a requiem (the subtitle of "When the Levees Broke" reads, "A Requiem in Four Acts") and now ends with a prayer. Prayers, really. Throughout his episode, Lee repeatedly looks to a higher power for relief -- as if he's shifted from honoring the dead by remembering what they went through in "Levees," to asking for help for the living by recognizing their subsequent states in "God Takes Care."
Help, specifically, for the people he's been talking to for 20 years. Shelton "Shakespear" Alexander introduces "God Takes Care of Fools and Babies" by standing before the gates of St. Vincent De Paul Cemetery No. 1, one of New Orleans' historic above-ground burial sites. Shelton appears in "Race Against Time," as well, but he was also interviewed by Lee in 2006 for "When the Levees Broke" (along with the aforementioned individuals) and again in 2010 for "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise." (His extensive home videos of pre- and post-Katrina appear across these documentaries are invaluable first-hand accounts from within the Superdome, driving down freshly ravaged streets, and outside his flattened house, when he's finally able to return.)
Many more subjects return for 20th anniversary interviews, including Lt. General Honoré, Wendell Pierce, Ivor Van Heerden, Fred Johnson (who provides the "systemic racism" line), Calvin Mackie, and Douglas Brinkley. But with Shelton, Lee directs a performance of one of his poems that's part warning, part release. He closes with compassion, repeating the refrain, "It feels like it was yesterday, that was 20 years ago," before calling on God for help. "If you believe in your heart, I'll be with you, wherever you go. Peace." Then he walks through the gates and disappears among the dead.
Phyllis Montana-Leblanc, another of Lee's subjects of two decades, is given the closing prayer, explicitly labeled "A Prayer for New Orleans." Standing on a gallery, shouting out to the neighborhood beneath her, wearing a shirt honoring her late mother, Montana-Leblanc's refrain is "20 years to life," which she pairs with "the time should fit the crime" at the start and "I still haven't screamed yet" at the end. In between, she mourns families ripped apart and the institutions that allowed them to be. "Gentrification replaced the foundation of education," she says, "leading to the need for resuscitation, leading me to a state of determination."
Determination and resuscitation. Requiems and prayers. By now, New Orleans has seen it all. What's it going to be next? Lee is putting his faith in God and the people -- these people. In terms of what the country ought to be, they sound like a good place to start.
"Katrina: Come Hell and High Water" premiered Wednesday, August 27 on Netflix. All three episodes are available now.