The Big Uneasy
That’s right, Ned Flanders has made a film about engineering. I hear Fred Flinstone is considering a feature on Poll Tax, too.

As early as the 1990s, academics were warning that New Orleans was a city ‘super susceptible to flooding.’ And yet, fifteen years later, when Hurricane Katrina hit the shores of New Orleans, the levees broke, water poured in to the city and the subsequent flooding killed thousands of people.

This new documentary explores the enormous series of engineering failures, oversights and negligence that led to the catastrophe, and how those have been lost in the myth of a ‘natural disaster’. So far, so predictable. The Big Uneasy, however, is directed by Harry Shearer. That’s right, Ned Flanders has made a film about engineering. I hear Fred Flinstone is considering a feature on Poll Tax, too.

Throughout the film – which also features an ‘Ask an New Orleanian’ section with John Goodman and voiceovers from fellow resident Brad Pitt – Shearer acts as a Greek Chorus to the tragedy unveiling before the audience. Not the familiar flood tragedy of people stranded on roofs or fleeing their homes; the tragic unravelling of the US Army Corps of Engineers and their attempts to cover up their own inadequacy.

We learn how the disastrous Mississippi River Gulf Outlet canal was, as early as the 1950s, destroying and destabilising New Orleans’ natural coastal defences; we learn that long before the hurricane hit, water had started to bubble up in to people’s gardens; we learn that the pumps intended to rid the city of flood water were consistently and constantly failing all industry tests; we learn that the new Corps hurricane protection project is, as one of the experts puts it, ‘building a multi-billion wall to prevent what they said didn’t happen’; we learn that, after the event, the Corps sent armed guards to stop independent academics accessing sites where the levees had failed. We learn, in short, that the US Army Corps of Engineers are baddies on a scale only possible when your bosses ‘make the laws and print the money.’

As documentaries go, The Big Uneasy isn’t the slickest and it certainly isn’t the most passionate. Comparisons will no doubt be drawn to the works of Spike Lee or Michael Moore, and with its fairly clunky graphic design and academic focus, Shearer’s film may be found lacking. However, the directorial decision not to include any of the familiar news footage, and to instead interview his subjects at the sites being discussed, will give British audiences a valuable insight in to this post-Katrina city, while the testimonies of those involved in the research is often moving, shocking and hugely enlightening.

With such a compelling subject and so much existing goodwill towards the director and presenters, it would be hard for The Big Uneasy not to be well received. Opening, as it does, on the fifth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina, it certainly deserves to be so.