Trouble the Water

When I was a wee lad, during the holidays we’d take our ritual tour around town to check out the Christmas extravagance in the tonier neighborhoods. The houses I called mansions as a kid would be decked out with lavish wreaths and tasteful displays of white lights, and we’d cruise by slowly to ooh and ahh at their stately sparkling coolness. But then before coming home my Dad would always make a roundabout trip through the less affluent part of town. Down the shabbier streets where maybe the solitary decoration would be a homemade paper snowflake scotch-taped to the storm door. Past thin sagging strings of lights draped around porch rails, and skimpy trees glimpsed through broken blinds of dim windows. Worse, the houses that were totally unadorned, devoid of any holiday cheer at all.

My little sister and I would sulk and slouch down in our seats during these grim detours, but it was no secret what my Dad was doing. After our awestruck visits to see how the rich did it, my father wanted us to see how the other half lived too — so we’d be thankful for what we had when we pulled into the driveway of our own home. And we were.

In the same spirit as my father’s sidetrips through the streets of distress, on this day of thanksgiving I’ll post the trailer for one of the front-runners for this year’s Best Feature Documentary. Trouble the Water played the festival circuit this summer and the trailer’s been around for months — though I don’t think we’ve posted it here before.

One of the first and most enthusiastic supporters of this film was our good friend Craig Kennedy at Living In Cinema. You can read his review here, and his his interview with the filmmakers here.

Taking the Roberts’ harrowing brush with Mother Nature and combining it with the story of their ongoing struggle to carry on with life in the aftermath of the storm, a powerful personal portrait emerges. It’s an inspiring tale of the survival of two people for whom Katrina was just the latest in a long line of traumas, but it also raises serious questions about how an entire segment of society can be neglected in a nation that likes to call itself the most powerful on earth.

By having the patience and discipline to allow Kimberly and Scott’s story (and the stories of the people they meet along the way) dominate the film while only occasionally injecting their own point of view, Lessin and Deal allow the viewer to be drawn into the drama (instead of being turned off by strident politics). Minds are opened rather than closed and that’s where conversation and perhaps healing begins.

If being thankful is to realize how lucky we are in life, another part is to be reminded that no matter how much or how little we have, it can all be swept away overnight. With the bottom dropping out of the economy, we’re all getting used to the idea that we have a rough couple of years ahead of us. But today I’m thinking about those who have it rough every day of their lives.

The DVD for Trouble the Water will be released in February, just in time for the Oscars.