A natural disaster wracks the American south, unleashing flash floods that decimate the houses and livelihoods of thousands. The camera’s eye captures sometimes surreal, sometimes poignant, always indelible imagery as nature opens up an industrial-strength can of whoop-ass on the unsuspecting populace. Ineffectual politicians tour the devastation with their chests puffed out, and you can see their hypocrisy drawing looks of weary resignation from the victims, most of whom are–unsurprisingly–of color.
Footage from Hurricane Katrina? Nope. Try going back 80-some years, to The Mississippi River Flood of 1927. The Great Flood, director Bill Morrison’s documentary/tone poem on the disaster, immerses viewers purely and fully in that world while elegantly drawing a direct continuum to the here and now.
The Great Flood is constructed entirely from archival footage of the disaster, and the movie wastes no time on modern documentary conventions. A minimal handful of sparse title cards introduce or set up passages. There’s no narration, no parade of talking heads blathering away, no newsreel footage, no contemporary sequences contrasting the devastation with tranquil modern settings, no quick cuts to break the spell. Morrison just lets the images run their course, often parking for many minutes on one scene.
Rather than becoming dull, the languid stretches induce a viewer to fully explore everything occupying the screen. Disintegrating walls of mud become symphonies of surging movement, and the camera’s eye glides through a dream-world of flooded buildings and half-submerged trees. Even something as mundane as manual labor becomes fascinating thanks to Morrison’s approach: Sharecroppers drag plows in silhouette, and one young black woman flashes an unguarded smile while picking cotton. Scores of faces pass by the camera, and it’s impossible not to ponder the histories and sorrows etched on each one.
As with his previous film Decasia, Morrison includes a fair amount of disintegrating and unrestored film stock, and the exquisite faults in that footage further the dreamlike feel. Coronas of emulsion burst spontaneously from human beings; jumpy black splotches multiply and overtake the topography like swarms of black insects. The parade of images flickers by, adorned only by Bill Frisell’s haunting score–a musical work that manages to be evocative without teetering into manipulation.
There’s some fascinating historical imagery here, of course: Secretary of Commerce/future President Herbert Hoover, Secretary of War Dwight F. Davis, and Pennsylvania Governor Gifford Pinchot sit in boats, impotently surveying the damage and the weary packs of workers trying to shore up the burst levees; and there’s a tantalizing (and sadly, silent) segment featuring blues musicians Son House, Big Bill Broonzy, and Sonny Boy Williamson as they play guitars with practiced fingers. But that just scratches the surface. What makes The Great Flood so mesmerizing is how Morrison and Frisell craft elegiac art from the remnants of history and natural disaster . It’s a spell that’s impossible to shake.
[The Great Flood opens tonight, and plays through March 27, at the Grand Illusion Cinema.]