Spike Lee's follow up to his Emmy Award-winning documentary about Hurricane Katrina, "When the Levees Broke: A Requiem in Three Acts," is fierce and exhaustive.


Marking the fifth anniversary of the 2005 disaster, Lee returns to HBO with "If God is Willing an Da Creek Don't Rise" and chronicles the tumultuous aftermath in New Orleans since the waters receded.


Lee starts with a bright moment--the February 2010 Superbowl win by the New Orleans Saints. But then the portrait he paints becomes less jovial and is filled with some harsh realities: the permanent displacement of 100,000 poor and working class residents; the seemingly opportunistic demolition of solidly built public housing and the closing of public schools.


The result is, however, not formulaic or predictable. Relatives and friends of those shot and killed by city police officers in the aftermath of Katrina tell horrific stories in their own words. Mental illness and the violence committed most often on young Black men by other young Black men is not spared critical attention.


In this aftermath, it is not all good like the images shown on cable news networks. There are no easy answers, even though the U.S. Secretary of Education Arne Duncan said that Hurricane Katrina is the "best thing" that could have happened to the city's ailing schools. There is even no easy solution in the instant relocation of the city's Black residents to a place like Utah, where the Black population hovers around one percent.


Lee tells this big story with his own style filled with archetypes, blues and jazz. And truth does not get lost in the art.

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