Desert Bayou (2006) (review)

For many, Spike Lee’s powerful opus, When the Levees Broke, has become the definitive documentary statement on the Hurricane Katrina disaster. But, as masterful as the film is, it does not tell the whole story. Whereas Lee crafted an epic tragedy, in Desert Bayou, director Alex LeMay has opted to make a smaller, more intimate film that traces the journey of 600 Katrina evacuees as they adjust to a new life in Utah.

It is the stark cultural contrast at the center of this social experiment that animates the film: Utah is overwhelmingly white, evacuees are almost all black; the environment in New Orleans is swampy, in Salt Lake it is desert; Utah is dominated by the Mormon Church, most evacuees are southern Baptist; New Orleans is liberal, Salt Lake is conservative. Given these realities, what was it like for 600 African American evacuees to resettle in Utah and what does their story reveal about race, class, religion and region in the United States? The film offers few easy answers.

Desert Bayou begins with a shiny metallic airplane, set against a bleach blue sky, landing in the Utah desert. Inside, 600 desperate New Orleans residents are relieved to have escaped the horror of broken levees and flooded lives. On the ground, hundreds of local people have been watching events unfold live on cable television. They are filling care packages and donating to the national emergency relief effort. The governor and mayor of Salt Lake City enthusiastically welcome the evacuees to their “new home.” The initial rush of hospitality gives many a sense of hope and optimism. National media reports painted a rosy early picture of the social experiment underway in Utah.

But, it was much more complicated than that; race and class and religion in America always are. The evacuees had, in fact, been hurried onto an airplane by FEMA bound for an unknown locale; their desperation gave them little choice in the matter. In Utah, evacuees were not welcomed into the homes of local people or placed in available Salt Lake housing. Rather, they were shuttled to cramped quarters on a largely abandoned military base 45 miles from the city. Officials at Camp Williams, in conjunction with the mayor, conducted extensive criminal background checks on each evacuee and imposed a strict curfew at the base. Many asked whether authorities would have treated white evacuees similarly.

Two incidents brought simmering tensions to a head. Early on, the Utah Attorney General stated publicly – and erroneously-that several dozen evacuees were convicted murderers. Not surprisingly, the media jumped on these claims, resulting in a surge of white racial anxiety. The second incident occurred when a local Mormon-owned radio station cancelled Rabbi Shmuley Boteach’s program after the New Jersey-based talk show host announced a meeting between evacuees who wished to permanently settle in Utah and Salt Lake families who pledged to help them find new homes in their communities. Some praised Boteach’s effort to bring the communities together and create dialogue, but many local whites balked at the prospect of having new low income black neighbors. Military leaders and city officials condemned Boteach’s event as a threat to social order.

Despite numerous obstacles, roughly 100 of the evacuees found enough hope in Utah to stay. The final and most poignant section of the film follows the struggles of Curtis and Clifford as they attempt to navigate this transition. Both men seek to make something good from the bad: get an education, mend strained marriages, overcome drug addition, criminal records and the desperation of poverty. They speak of wiping the slate clean and getting a new chance at old dreams. Yet, several months later, we see that it was not so easy. After the initial burst of charity, both men are largely on their own and more acutely aware of the tension attached to being black in lily-white surroundings. They complain about the weather and the difficulty making new friends. Both suffer from symptoms of post-traumatic...