Watch This
I am about to recommend two documentaries as "required" viewing even though I haven't seen both of either of them!
The first is "When the Levees Broke" about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. While at the beach, hubby and me watched Acts 1 and 2 and I caught most of Acts 3 and 4 when it aired a couple of days later. In watching it, you probably won't find much that you don't already know, but you'll be reminded of a lot. And given the state that New Orleans is still in and the number of people who have been displaced, well, we probably need the reminder. If you don't like Bush, there is nothing in this documentary that will change your mind. If you do like him, well, what is wrong with you? At every level, the government failed. I am not a fan of big government and think that they spend entirely too much time in our business, but since we're paying for big government, we should get something out of it. The response was dismal and ineffective. The excuse of "we had no idea it was this bad" holds no credence when all you had to do is turn on your television to see how bad it is. You'll want to check the exclusions on your insurance policy and look for ways that you'll be screwed. They have managed to dodge paying out probably what amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars by declaring most of the damage as having been caused not by the hurricane, but flooding. One man, who had held his policy for the entire 50 years he'd owned his house, was given $800 for non-flood damage to his home. A new shed was deemed repairable (not that it looked that way in the footage) and was given $400 for it. Yep, I'm sure he'll be breaking ground on a new place any day now. Insurance has evolved from no exclusions to the current state where they can exclude practically anything they want to the point you'll wonder if your policy covers anything at all. After we suffered the glancing effects of a hurricane that pushed inland a couple of years ago, I actually asked about getting flood insurance in addition to our homeowners policy. I was told that they could arrange for whoever it was that had to come and approve it, but they had never had one person in our area approved for it. There are powerful scenes in this documentary, things that will make you sad, plenty to make you mad, but the length does make it a hard watch if you try and do it all at once (probably why HBO wasn't airing it back to back). But despite it's fault, it should be watched.
The second recommendation is one that I missed the first 10 minutes of and the very end (the show "froze" on screen and when it started back up, the credits were rolling...I probably missed about 5, maybe 10 minutes) is "White Light/Black Rain" about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Unless there is something wrong with your, this one will rip your heart out. Don't like subtitles...deal with it...it's worth it. Presented is not only the words of survivors, but their artwork as well. They begin their stories with their every day life, what they and their families were doing in the moments before their lives were changed in the most horrifying way. They were but children at the time, happy and content, who watched their families die, sometimes immediately before their eyes...others more slowly from the after effects. We were arrogant in our ignorance when we dropped the bombs, our understanding of the legacy we would leave were incomplete. Afterwards, many had no choice but to return to the ruins of the city because the government gave them no aid and no one else wanted them. Even now, even today, they do not want people to know that they were there, that they were survivors because they had become the untouchables. You might be surprised that not all of them hated the Americans when they came as they blamed us less than their own goverment. And then, when they thought the worst was over, radiation poisoning came. No one understood or knew how to treat it and in some cases, no one tried. You will feel the pain of the woman who so wishes that she had died in place of her family because she convinced them that they should all stay together as a family in Nagasaki. They all died within months...leaving her alone. It's well done and not overdone....they let the stories speak for themselves. And even though their voices are often soft, they speak as loud as the bombs that changed their lives forever.
The first is "When the Levees Broke" about New Orleans and Hurricane Katrina. While at the beach, hubby and me watched Acts 1 and 2 and I caught most of Acts 3 and 4 when it aired a couple of days later. In watching it, you probably won't find much that you don't already know, but you'll be reminded of a lot. And given the state that New Orleans is still in and the number of people who have been displaced, well, we probably need the reminder. If you don't like Bush, there is nothing in this documentary that will change your mind. If you do like him, well, what is wrong with you? At every level, the government failed. I am not a fan of big government and think that they spend entirely too much time in our business, but since we're paying for big government, we should get something out of it. The response was dismal and ineffective. The excuse of "we had no idea it was this bad" holds no credence when all you had to do is turn on your television to see how bad it is. You'll want to check the exclusions on your insurance policy and look for ways that you'll be screwed. They have managed to dodge paying out probably what amounts to hundreds of millions of dollars by declaring most of the damage as having been caused not by the hurricane, but flooding. One man, who had held his policy for the entire 50 years he'd owned his house, was given $800 for non-flood damage to his home. A new shed was deemed repairable (not that it looked that way in the footage) and was given $400 for it. Yep, I'm sure he'll be breaking ground on a new place any day now. Insurance has evolved from no exclusions to the current state where they can exclude practically anything they want to the point you'll wonder if your policy covers anything at all. After we suffered the glancing effects of a hurricane that pushed inland a couple of years ago, I actually asked about getting flood insurance in addition to our homeowners policy. I was told that they could arrange for whoever it was that had to come and approve it, but they had never had one person in our area approved for it. There are powerful scenes in this documentary, things that will make you sad, plenty to make you mad, but the length does make it a hard watch if you try and do it all at once (probably why HBO wasn't airing it back to back). But despite it's fault, it should be watched.
The second recommendation is one that I missed the first 10 minutes of and the very end (the show "froze" on screen and when it started back up, the credits were rolling...I probably missed about 5, maybe 10 minutes) is "White Light/Black Rain" about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. Unless there is something wrong with your, this one will rip your heart out. Don't like subtitles...deal with it...it's worth it. Presented is not only the words of survivors, but their artwork as well. They begin their stories with their every day life, what they and their families were doing in the moments before their lives were changed in the most horrifying way. They were but children at the time, happy and content, who watched their families die, sometimes immediately before their eyes...others more slowly from the after effects. We were arrogant in our ignorance when we dropped the bombs, our understanding of the legacy we would leave were incomplete. Afterwards, many had no choice but to return to the ruins of the city because the government gave them no aid and no one else wanted them. Even now, even today, they do not want people to know that they were there, that they were survivors because they had become the untouchables. You might be surprised that not all of them hated the Americans when they came as they blamed us less than their own goverment. And then, when they thought the worst was over, radiation poisoning came. No one understood or knew how to treat it and in some cases, no one tried. You will feel the pain of the woman who so wishes that she had died in place of her family because she convinced them that they should all stay together as a family in Nagasaki. They all died within months...leaving her alone. It's well done and not overdone....they let the stories speak for themselves. And even though their voices are often soft, they speak as loud as the bombs that changed their lives forever.
Labels: documentary, Hiroshima, Katrina, Nagasaki, New Orleans
posted by Hope at 8:21 PM
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