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I am not a huge Spike Lee fan. Most of his fiction to me has been over rated. With the exception of Malcom X, which was terrific, his fiction has suffered from a lack of three dimensionality. His documentaries are a very different story. 4 Little Girls and now When the Levies Broke Requium in Four Acts. Lee, who has an inability to draw out women's characters in fiction, does a masterful job of telling real women's and men's stories.
You can't watch this film without feeling a combination of anger and sadness. I am not all that old but where is the country I grew up in? We landed on the moon when I was one. We won the cold war when I was 21. We invented the whole computer based economy. Where is this country? We did a better job 75 years ago than we did now in helping survivors in New Orleans. Herbert Hoover, yes that Herbert Hoover, ran a relief effort for a 1927 flood that flooded over a million people's homes, that was better in every significant way than the one run by Bush in 2005. It should be noted that Hoover was not President but a cabinent secretary in 1927.
The gross negligence and incompetence lays bare the notion that this is still a can do country. Day after day after day after day after day a major American city saw its citizens die for lack of food and water. It saw a major American city with people on roofs, overpasses, and in the Superdome left to die. First world countries don't have this happen. Heck, it is hard to argue that Indonesia did any worse than we did. Indonesia is no first world country.
Real countries don't let this happen. Under Bush we have lost our sense of greatness. We are hated abroad and shown to be incompetents at home. A year later New Orleans has garbage strewn neighborhoods. A year later people still are in far flung destinations and now in trailers that are death traps with improper locks.
The country I grew up in wouldn't have this happen. It had just passed the Civil Rights Law. We put a man on the moon. We built the twin towers of the trade center. We used a space shuttle to ferry men into space and back again. We are the richest nation on planet earth. And we let a city die.
Total incompetence and utter failure. Spike Lee brought it all to you in living color. Don't watch this film if you still want to believe in an America that care. Don't watch this film if you want to believe we are a first world country. Don't watch this film if you want to believe in the America which landed on the moon. Don't watch this film if you want to believe in an America that takes care of its own.
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