In the very first scene of Trouble The Water, a raw documentary chronicling the Hurricane Katrina disaster, we meet a congenial husband and wife “from New Orleans the Ninth Ward Underwater.” The wife, Kimberly, brags about the footage she has of Hurricane Katrina. “All the footage I seen on TV. Nobody aint got what I got. I got right there in the hurricane."
Flash backwards to Kimberly’s actual footage two weeks earlier. She is, as it turns out, an aspiring rap artist (calling herself “Black Kold Madina”) and though boasting is a common form of expression in that idiom, she’s right. The footage really is something. She wasn’t boasting so much as truth telling.
Trouble in Water is jarring to watch at first, with its handheld amateur camerawork (by Kimberly herself) as she wanders her neighborhood interviewing those that remain about their plans for the big storm. She’s a congenial, if clearly uneducated, host. But as she walks and talks and jokes about with neighbors’ girls a remarkably authentic portrait of community begins to emerge. One little girl she interviews brag about what ward she’s from. The adults talk about staying in town despite the evacuation order and reminisce about other storms. The kids seem equally nonchalant. Another little girl – and it’s easy to imagine her as a young version of Kimberly growing up in the same matter-of-fact, proud environment boasts “I know it’s coming but I ain’t never scared of the hurricane. The hurricane is nothing but water. Who scared of water? Not me!”
The camera and interviewing skills may be amateur but the portrait of community sure is professional. Trouble in Water paints an impressive picture of a hard knock but tight knit community in peril. Before long you’re totally drawn in to these unfamiliar lives. I got lost a few times in who was related to whom but that’s beside the point. They’re all essentially family. The storytelling is wisely intimate and focused on the husband and wife but the subject matter: poverty, governmental failures and especially community is large and resonant. The knowledge that the Ninth Ward is about to be hit by a merciless force of nature informs the drama and looms like a shadow. You know the husband and wife will survive the storm with their camera intact but it’s disturbing to notice the emptiness of the streets (anyone with means has fled), and understand despite the inarticulate dialogue that it’s poverty that’s forcing the brave faces and boasting. Kimberly is smart enough to acknowledge this, telling the camera that she would’ve left town if she could have, if she had wheels. One mother, still standing outside, remarks “I’m gonna do the storm. I’m gonna do it out” She says it as casually as one might decide to call out sick for work in inclement weather.
The footage of the storm that follows, including chilling images of the family trapped in the attic as their house fills up with water lasts for only about 20 minutes (intercut with local news footage of the storm) but Trouble in Water has more than a natural disaster on its mind. The next hour of the film, no longer exclusively filmed by the rapper but presumably the actual documentary’s directors (Carl Deal and Tia Lessin) and their production team, sees Kimberly, her husband and their surviving neighbors facing even greater and more enduring storms. Let’s call them Hurricane FEMA, Hurricane Bush, and Hurricane Poverty… and leave the rest of the film for you to discover since you must see it.
In the age of reality TV, where no live unscripted footage ever comes across as truly genuine but performed as “ideas” of reality, Trouble the Water and its brutally intimate journey of two survivors feels rather bracing. It’s a reminder that camcorders are not just toys. And telling your story to the camera is not just exhibitionism. These pervasive American objects and habits can record the truth of experience just as well they can record people lip-synching to pop songs for YouTube. Sometimes they can capture history as it is lived. Trouble in Water is still not reality per se. You’re aware that the footage you’re watching has been edited and scored, and decisions have been made in the telling. But I’ll be damned if Kimberly (Black Kold Madina!), your expressive guide, isn’t keeping it real.
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- Video interview with Co-Director's Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
- indieWIRE's interview with Co-Director's Tia Lessin and Carl Deal
