Critic Reviews

Ultimately, If God Is Willing And Da Creek Don’t Rise is a documentary about the myriad ways that the poor stay poor, and the way our society marginalizes them by reducing them to numbers on a balance sheet instead of people with their own unique stories to tell and their own network of friends and family who love and rely on them.

Lee has sacrificed some clarity for inclusiveness; this is the document as monument, artful and rough by turns, and determined to be as big as its subject.

It was created under different circumstances and it is, perhaps inevitably, a less powerful work than “When the Levees Broke,” more diffuse in its storytelling and more uncertain in its point of view.

It is, frankly, a lot to absorb — and would risk crumbling under the weight of Lee’s ambition were it not for the second gut punch to the region that BP’s horrifying blunder delivered.