"Trouble the Water" captures Katrina through a survivor's point of view

One of the year's most acclaimed nonfiction films, "Trouble the Water" benefits from a uniquely personal approach to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina.

More than most documentaries, this mosaiclike movie is made up of many pieces, and it's considerably more than the sum of those parts. The veteran directors, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, started off in one direction, emphasizing Louisiana's National Guard and other stories; in the end, they shot about 200 hours of material.

But they quickly restructured the film when a talented 24-year-old rap artist, Kimberly Rivers Roberts, showed up and turned them around. Roberts startled them with the raw, handheld video footage she'd shot in and around her New Orleans home as the levees broke and water trapped her and her husband, Scott.

In addition to the flooding, Roberts' footage captures the relative calm before the storm washed away so many homes and lives. Although her camcorder's battery ran out, she was still able to show the buildup to the hurricane, which sent her and Scott past the porch, up the stairs and into their pitch-dark attic.

To make up for gaps in Roberts' coverage, Deal and Lessin used their own material, as well as clips from television news shows, including President Bush's "heckuva job" comments, FEMA's failures and the media's participation in the story they were reporting.

By playing with the time scheme, the filmmakers turned what could have been a weakness into one of the film's strengths. The result is not a straightforward, strictly chronological account of what happened. (Spike Lee memorably covered that territory in his HBO film, "When the Levees Broke.") Deal and Lessin achieve an emotional, impressionistic truth that might not have been available to them if they'd tried to shoehorn the material into a more conventional narrative.

"We had this back-and-forth movement in time, which kind of mimics the effect that trauma has on people in real life," said Deal, when he and Lessin brought "Trouble the Water" to the Seattle International Film Festival in June.

"Kimberly [who performs one of her songs within the film] encouraged us to be more resourceful ourselves," added Deal. "I think it makes it a little more immediate for the audience."

John Hartl: johnhartl@yahoo.com