We don't just see the tragedy of soldiers returning from Iraq to domestic devastation. (The closing titles tell us they've been sent back to Iraq again.) We witness the insult of otherwise heroic servicemen treating U.S. citizens as an occupied population, denying them entrance to unoccupied military housing, zooming through their streets without stopping to check for casualties or treating them generally as suspicious characters. (One young serviceman sneers at civilians because, he says, they haven't been trained to survive.)
The film's co-directors, Carl Deal and Tia Lessin, root the movie in Roberts' footage and let it grow out organically. After the flood subsides, frustration expands. The filmmakers bring home the importance of clear, direct, democratic policy-making in concrete, human terms. You share the agony of a recovering addict who's been working in a church ministry; he's barred from getting FEMA funds because he lacks his own New Orleans address.
As Kimberly and Scott travel to an uncle's place in northern Louisiana and a cousin's in Memphis, Tenn., the distance brings the movie's themes into focus. Kimberly's aunt says she thought the events she saw on her TV could have happened only in the Third World; Kimberly says she felt as if she and her 9th Ward friends were not considered part of the United States.
