The documentary was released on the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and represents Spike Lee's third film focused on New Orleans and its residents. The 88-minute film revisits themes from earlier projects while taking a more concise, epilogue-like approach. The film highlights systemic racism onscreen and frames its narrative with poems presented as prayers. The film condemns institutional failures before and after Katrina that produced lost lives, broken families, and cultural erasure. The filmmaker displays a growing wariness after repeated political and ethical failures, yet affirms faith in the resilience and humanity of New Orleans residents. The film appears as one episode within a three-part Netflix series about Katrina.
While not officially a sequel to his two HBO projects ("When the Levees Broke" and 2010's follow-up, "If God Is Willing and da Creek Don't Rise"), Lee's latest look at the Big Easy still feels like a capper - perhaps an epilogue, given its truncated length (88 minutes as opposed to four hours), revived themes, (when a subject mentions "systemic racism," Lee plasters the words onscreen like a title card),
Starting and ending with poems framed as prayers, "God Takes Care of Fools and Babies" sees a lively Lee once again denounce the institutional failures before and after Katrina that led to lost lives, broken families, and cultural erasure. But now that he's seen countless more political, ethical, and moral failures in the years since - and despite his best efforts to speak truth to power - there's a wariness to Lee's recitations of infuriating facts and figures.
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