There may be a lot left to say about Hurricane Katrina, but if so, “I’m Carolyn Parker” doesn’t say it.
Director Jonathan Demme wandered into the Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans in 2006, where he met a personable and ebullient retired chef, Carolyn Parker, whose house was severely damaged by the storm. She got a bit of media attention when she confronted then-Mayor Ray Nagin at a public hearing and lambasted him, and authorities in general, for not doing enough to help the Lower Ninth’s residents.
Over the next four years, Demme dropped in once in a while, in between his work on a dozen other projects, and spliced together snippets of interviews with Parker as she moved into a FEMA trailer and waited for her house to be rebuilt.
We see Carolyn cook meals, chat with her adult children, reminisce about her life, attend church and complain about the contractors. And that’s about it. There’s no greater context about the storm in general or the government response to it, nor does Demme even allow his curiosity to lead him to explore the rest of the neighborhood. There’s just this one random citizen and her random thoughts. Demme won an Oscar for “The Silence of the Lambs,” but he’s mistaken if he thinks this half-hearted assemblage constitutes a film.