"This film document is in remembrance of all the Hurricane Katrina victims in New Orleans and in the Gulf states of Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama and Florida. Today, the people living along the Gulf Coast continue in their daily struggle to rebuild, revive and renew in these United States of America."
— The Opening Scroll of Act One.
When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Four Acts is a 2006 documentary series directed by Spike Lee about the impact of Hurricane Katrina, focussing primarily on first hand accounts from residents of New Orleans. Acts One and Two look at the immediate impact of the storm, while Acts Three and Four look at the ongoing efforts of the city's residents to rebuild their lives and the obstacles they face.
Provides examples of:
- Citywide Evacuation: A mandatory evacuation of the city was ordered when it became clear how severe the storm would be, but many residents did not evacuate, either because they felt like they could ride it out or because they didn't have the means to evacuate.
- Crappy Holidays: One of the interviewees is a pastor at a church in Queens that had several new members who’d evacuated to the area after Katrina. He describes the Thanksgiving just two months after the hurricane as being "gut-wrenching" for them.
- Deer in the Headlights: Mike Myers' reaction to Kanye's live unscripted statement that "George Bush doesn't care about Black people."
- Finale Credits: Just before the credits proper, Act Four ends with a montage of every interviewee giving their names and where they're from in New Orleans.
- Good-Times Montage: Subverted. Act One opens with a montage set to "Do You Know What It Means to Miss New Orleans?" by Louis Armstrong showing Stock Footage that showcases the city's past and rich cultural heritage, juxtaposed against more recent footage showing the destruction of Katrina.
- Heat Wave: The immediate aftermath of the storm included overwhelmingly high temperatures at a time when people didn’t have air conditioning or even just an intact building where they could shelter from the elements.
- Hope Spot: One interviewee talks about going to the office of his law firm and seeing that the power was back on in the building. Thinking that this meant he could start reopening the business, he and his brothers arrived at the building later to discover that the building had only temporarily been provided with electricity so that it would look good in the background while George Bush gave a speech.
- Lives in a Van: One segment looks at the FEMA trailers supplied to people who've been made homeless by the storm, from how difficult they are to obtain to how shoddily they're built.
- Local Soundtrack: As well as an original score by New Orleans native, Terence Blanchard, the series includes music from other local artists and musical performances from parades in the city.
- Long Last Look: Junior Rodriguez recounts how, when he eventually decided to leave his home before the storm hit, he asked his wife to take the scenic route on the drive so he could take one last look before the storm came in and changed everything.
- Manly Tears: Several men weep openly, both in footage from the event itself and in the interviews:Damon Hewitt: In days after Katrina, many of us cried. I'm not afraid to say that I cried because I was sad about what I was seeing. And I cried because people were losing their lives. And I cried because there was such chaos. And I cried because I felt helpless and I didn't know what I could do.
- Screw the Rules, I'm Doing What's Right!: Marc Morial commends the US Coast Guard for disregarding normal rules so that they could do as much as they possibly could with their resources to rescue people.
- Shout-Out:
- Phyllis Montana Leblanc compares the storm tearing the roofs off buildings to the title character in Attack of the 50 Foot Woman
- Wynton Marsalis sings an A Cappella version of the folk song "St James Infirmary", which gets used as the soundtrack for a brief montage of footage of survivors making their way through the city’s flooded streets.
- Spreading Disaster Map Graphic: There is a brief display of a map in order to illustrate the breaches of the levees.
- Strawman Has a Point (In-Universe): Al Sharpton says that he's often been very critical of Hip-Hop artists for not having anything substantive to say, but he says that Kanye West was expressing what many people, particularly Black people, were feeling about Bush's response to the Katrina.
- Talking Heads: The documentary made up primarily of interviews, most of which are held in a studio. Some of them are filmed on location in the city.
- Titled After the Song: The title is a reference to the blues song, "When the Levee Breaks" by Memphis Minnie.
- Trauma Button: Several interviewees speak candidly about the impact the hurricane and its aftermath has had on their mental health.
- What the Hell, Hero?: According to Michael Eric Dyson, when Condoleezza Rice was out shoe shopping in the immediate aftermath of the storm, she was rebuked by another customer for wasting her time on something so trivial while so many people were dying, and was also booed by the audience when she went to see Spamalot. Rice's own memoir
corroborates this story in that she mentions going to Ferragamo and going to Spamalot, although she doesn't discuss what sort of reactions she encountered from the public. - You Can't Go Home Again: Many people were unable to return to the city after being evacuated, not just because their homes had been destroyed but because existing problems with the city's infrastructure had been exacerbated by the hurricane to the point that they couldn't justify moving back when they had a better quality of life elsewhere.
