You Call That A Recommendation?
Spike Lee’s “When The Levees Broke”, his four-hour documentary on Katrina, begins airing tonight on HBO. Spike is a sometimes brilliant filmmaker whose political opinions are, to say the least, borderline juvenile in their paranoia (to continue a discussion from another thread, Lee’s almost masterpiece “Do The Right Thing” is moral relativism at its worst – Radio Raheem breaks the rules at Sal’s place, Sal loses control and busts up the radio, the neighborhood riots, the cops kill Radio Raheem, Mookie throws a trash can through Sal’s window, the neighborhood burns Sal’s Famous to the ground, Mookie has the nerve to show up and ask for his last paycheck, and Sal crumbles immediately and gives it to him. Who did the right thing? There is no right thing – everyone is equally culpable, and Malcom X and Martin Luther King, with their embrace and repudiation of violence, respectively, are given equal time).
Which Spike Lee will show up, then? Probably both, but Stephen Holden inadvertently gives the game away with his rave review:
“When the Levees Broke” has clear-cut heroes and villains. New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin comes across as a salty, tough-talking leader bravely persevering in the face of social breakdown. Harry Belafonte and the Rev. Al Sharpton are treated as sages, and Lt. Gen. Russel Honoré, belatedly dispatched to begin the major evacuation, is hailed by Mayor Nagin as “a John Wayne dude.” The villains are the usual ones from the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA.
The film has no major new revelations about the outrageously tardy response of the Bush administration to the crisis, as if any were needed. The failures speak for themselves.
Nagin as the hero (is his salty, tough-talking “chocolate New Orleans” comment included? Never mind, Spike probably approves)? Harry Belafonte and Al Sharpton sages? Oh, dear, that’s not going to do at all – to go back to “Do The Right Thing”, this is the Spike Lee who put “Tawana Told The Truth” up on a wall in graffiti – and I don’t need any more of that Spike Lee.
Pass…
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