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Touring the devastation that Hurricane Katrina wrought on New Orlean's Lower Ninth Ward, Jonathan Demme meets Carolyn Parker standing on the porch of what remains of her house. Parker invites him inside and seems to immediately become the focus of this documentary. She's very open and friendly and shows him around her house. It's basic structure is intact, but everything has been stripped out and stolen by looters. Determined to stay, she's been living in it for months with her brother and daughter.
Demme returns every few months for a few years and the film becomes a document of government inaction and Parker's determination. Demme's approach is pretty much to set the context minimally and then let people talk. It has a tendency to make the film a little looser and more ramshackle than it should be at times, but it also vividly brings to life the fact that this story is about people who had their entire lives upended and the vast injustice of it taking literal years to get the very basics back.
Demme returns every few months for a few years and the film becomes a document of government inaction and Parker's determination. Demme's approach is pretty much to set the context minimally and then let people talk. It has a tendency to make the film a little looser and more ramshackle than it should be at times, but it also vividly brings to life the fact that this story is about people who had their entire lives upended and the vast injustice of it taking literal years to get the very basics back.