Has no one else seen this? I heard how good Spike Lee’s documentary on Katrina was, and so quickly bought it when released on dvd, then as quickly shelved it, as it was hard to drum up excitement about a film that was almost certainly good for me but would be painful to watch. Foolish. This is a great, great film–easily the best documentary I’ve seen since (and probably better yet than) the excellent Mondovino. It is heartwrenching but often startlingly funny; its powerful sociopolitical thrust complemented by a remarkable sense of rhythm, image, sound, editing. It’s just amazing filmmaking, and I’m enjoying the hell out of it, even as it is in equal parts enraging and enlightening.
I’ll write more later–but I wanted to see if others simply hadn’t posted . . . .
I think you could make the case that Spike Lee is our most important filmmaker–in every sense of “important.” I cannot believe a work this damn good came out so quickly after the event.
I watched this when it debuted, and I thought it was compelling and very well made. And I think HBO knew exactly how good it was going to be from early on, as they were willing to give Lee an extra million dollars to double its length.
I read that Lee is working on a James Brown biopic. I hope we don’t have to wait too long.
I thought it was extraordinarily good as well, and Lee picked a good cast of regulars to interview for each phase of the disaster (including ‘The Wire’ regular, Wendell Pierce). The footage alone is remarkable. Coincidentally, I got an email just last week from Columbia Teachers College for a free curriculum to accompany the DVD for use in the classroom. The website is here: http://www.teachingthelevees.org/
Jonathan Demme has a documentary on return and rebuilding in the aftermath, parts to be shown on PBS and I guess the whole to come out some time later.
I don’t know if I can get back to this in a busy week, but what struck me upon watching Levees was a favorable comparison with Robert Altman’s work. We have discussed Altman as an anomaly in American filmmaking, but I think a case could be made that Lee comes closest to embodying–in his own very distinct fashions–the motivating ethos and aesthetic of Altman’s work.
Both filmmakers seem alive to the moment in their camera eyes, gifted with an enthusiasm for the energy of improvisation. You hear actors talk about working with Lee and Altman and you catch a common collaborative pursuit–both interested in investing the people in front of the camera with their own agendas, and simply trying to match them. Both filmmakers slink around in and through and around genre and avant-garde techniques, yet in every respective film worry less about the trappings of plot than what it allows for an investigation of personalities and community. And community seems the key word for both: aside from John Sayles, no other American filmmakers seem as intent on capturing, illuminating the nature of community.
You also see in Altman and Lee a love of jazz that is tied to this spirit of community, to the deep histories which subtend the present, to the intersections of politics and culture. . .
We could go on. Anyone buy this connection/comparison?
I buy it. You mention with Altman and Lee what goes on in front of the camera and at the level of narrative and theme. But I want to emphasize the camera work of both. Today it seems all directors have essentially three ideas in their playbook (in order not of preference but of “necessity”):
1. the static camera
2. the steadicam track & pivot (aka “The Soderbergh”)
3. the handheld pan and tilt
Now think of Altman or Lee and notice what they add to this inventory. For instance, Altman zooms. Who the hell zooms? And what’s wrong with zooming? Conventional wisdom is that the camera should be unobtrusive so that audiences can focus on what’s “important.” Call it the Classical Hollywood Style, or call it crap filmmaking (and crap editing: shot reverse shot, shot reverse shot).
In how many films do you have this scene: five or six men sitting around a table (playing poker, eating dinner, whatever). The conversation is rapid, there’s a lot of laughter, drinking, smoking, etc. This scene is repeated again and again and again. And it is done in basically one type of shot: the camera hovers and circles the table (a variation: the camera pans around from the center of the table. Do you think the makers of “That 70s Show” invented that shot?)
Now think of the poker game from McCabe. This comment is already a rant, but let me add hyperbole: McCabe and Mrs. Miller comes as close to perfection as any film in the past fifty years. Why? Because of what reynolds says: Altman is alive to the moment in his camera eye, and gifted with enthusiasm.
Think, too, of Kubrick. Though many of his films are great from a narrative perspective (there’s no better story than Paths of Glory ), they are principally to be looked at–and they raise the status of cinema as first and foremost a photographic medium (Kubrick was an award winning photographer before he got into film). And like Lee and Altman, Kubrick knew the value of improvsation.
though i think an essential difference is that altman made bloody boring films, and lee’s films, even his bad ones, are always fun.
My free teaching packet arrived today. The Spike Lee documentary on two DVDs and an instructional booklet (that I tossed immediately). I think it is Rockefeller foundation money providing this, but it must be costing a fair amount unless Lee is essentially putting the film into the public domain.