Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke is a television milestone that ranks with Edward R. Murrow’s Harvest of Shame as an unflinching document of a national disgrace. Over the course of four hour-long “acts” (plus, for this DVD, a newly filmed fifth act), Lee chronicles the devastation wrought not just by 2005’s Hurricane Katrina but also by ill-prepared, inefficient, and seemingly indifferent federal, state, and local officials, who fiddled while New Orleans drowned.

As Lee rightly surmised, when trying to wrap one’s mind around the enormity of the Katrina disaster and its aftermath, sound bites on the evening news and partisan sniping on talk shows just wouldn’t hold water. He meticulously compiled news footage and conducted interviews with residents, politicians, and volunteers; the raw footage of citizens railing at the heavens for someone, anyone, to hear them and help them is especially affecting.

There is plenty of blame to go around, according to Lee: There’s FEMA director Michael Brown on CNN, professing ignorance that thousands were living like refugees inside the Superdome. There’s Condoleezza Rice shoe-shopping and taking in Spam-a-Lot on Broadway while 80 percent of New Orleans was under water.

And there’s President Bush praising Brown with “You’re doing a heck of a job,” an infamous quote Lee can’t resist playing back three times for its outrage value. Lee’s voice can be heard off camera during interviews, but he does not inject himself into the proceedings. (Barnes & Noble)

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Director Spike Lee’s When the Levees Broke is the definitive document of he unmitigated disaster that was, and is, Hurricane Katrina. It’s also a contemporary manifestation of an ancient tradition: an oral history, told by the people who lived it, with no narration and only the occasional use of archival cable and broadcast news footage in addition to Lee’s own film.

And a grim tale it is, an “American tragedy” subtitled “a Requiem in Four Acts,” each of them about an hour long (”Act V,” appearing on the third of the set’s three discs, is a lengthy epilogue with new material not included in the original HBO broadcast) and focusing almost exclusively on New Orleans, as opposed to the Gulf Coast region in general.

Act I sets the scene; as the hurricane nears the Crescent City, some residents leave town, while others stay behind, figuring they’ll just ride the storm out (Mayor Ray Nagin’s “mandatory evacuation” order rings fairly hollow, as there’s no public transportation provided for the many who don’t own vehicles and thus couldn’t get out even if they wanted to).

The real problems begin after Katrina makes landfall on August 29, 2005. Displaced New Orleaneans crowd into the Superdome, soon to become a living hell for those stuck there; the incredibly poorly engineered levees break, flooding some 80 percent of the city; and people start dying by the hundreds, victims of drowning, lack of food, water. (Amazon)