I remember one evening in May looking at my Facebook feed and seeing a lot of posts about severe weather. It wasn’t severe weather for where I currently live, but where I grew up. In the coming days, I would see pictures of devastation, hear stories of lives lost, and wonder if any of them would be people I knew. As a resident of Orlando, and LGBTQ, I had a similar moment waking up on a morning in June. But, while I had friends who had gone to Pulse on a regular basis, i had never been. I didn’t know what it was like to walk through that building, and to have that part of your history destroyed. I have lived in Southwest missouri, and I had been up and down range line Road, in and out of buildings that were leveled when one of the strongest tornadoes possible ripped through a town with a population of over 50,000 people.
So, to see that Netflix assembled a documentary using as much footage as they could find from people caught in the storm, and having them retell their stories, I knew this would be one beast of a film. i had so many different expectations, looking for a comprehensive documentary that not just captured the terror, but also the devastation and determination to rebuild. They lost their high school. they lost their hospital. Entire neighborhoods leveled, businesses blown away. A city and its landscape that had flourished for years was systematically changed in just a fraction of time. I’m not a graduate of Joplin High School, but I had been in that building for competitions. Old buildings often are built to stand, made from brick or stone, and aren’t so easily destroyed. A rather historic high School suffered tremendous damage the same day it graduated its class of Seniors.
I grew up in one of the smaller towns just outside of Joplin, which is the bigger city for a bunch of smaller towns. If you lived in Carthage, Webb City, Carl Junction, Seneca, Neosho, Racine, Goodman, Granby, or any number of other towns in the 4-state area, Joplin offered what many of those towns did not. A bigger level of shopping, a mall, movie theaters, restaurants, a performing arts venue, a 4-year college, and an airport that wasn’t built for private planes, but had commercial flights. Everyone went there. You basically had to at some point, because your town lacked something else, and driving to Tulsa or Springfield was a little longer of a drive, but those cities offered even more.
I remember tornado drills, and sirens. I remember being thankful my house was older, built from brick, and on the side of a hill so I had a sturdy basement just in case. The kids in this documentary do blow off tornados like they are nothing, but I certainly felt like people took it seriously. the reason is when you live in tornado alley, you actually can get those more powerful twisters that can drop, and move fast enough that every second counts. I’ve been in a movie theater when the projector stopped the movie, and an announcement was made that we were under a tornado warning. So, I know it’s cool to be young, but I don’t believe this entire collection of kids doesn’t know that tornadoes do more than blow cows around.
the point of this is to capture the storm itself, but there’s so much more to this story. They were trying to help people, but had to send them to other area hospitals, because their nice big (relatively new) hospital was destroyed. they don’t bring that up here. In discussing the recovery efforts, they bring up Obama visiting, but not how Tide set up mobile laundry stations. They mention that the kids had to go to high school inside the mall without going into the logistics of refurbishing an empty department store for them. there are so many more stories to tell here, and the documentary is so short. i wish they had taken the opportunity to do so. The Eagles deserved better, and that’s coming from a Wildcat.
But this film is even more somber, as it was narrated by Dianne Newman, who I just posted about last week, and mentioned her passing. She was an excellent talent, and her voice in audio description will be sorely missed. her narration, and the script written by Jeff heck, which refer to the town looking like a war zone, both supported the film in the best way possible. Fantastic work by Descriptive Video Works.
I did want more. I don’t know if anyone else will ever make another Joplin tornado film, so it is important to get it right the first time. Parts of this are harrowing as hell, but having been where this storm crossed, there were many more miles to go.
Fresh: Final Grade: B+, Audio Description: A
