IT WILL MAKE YOUR BLOOD BOIL
‘Dark Waters’ is based on true story about lawyer who uncovers a secret about a firm’s toxic dump
Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters, about the prolonged (and ongoing) legal fight to uncover the environmental damage of cancer-inducing “forever chemicals” and hold their corporate makers accountable, is a sober and ominous docudrama. On its surface, it’s an unspectacular one. Its lead character, a corporate defence attorney played by Mark Ruffalo, is no Erin Brockovich. The movie, itself, is grey and murky like the toxic West Virginia waters that provide the film’s first gloomy sense of trouble.
But just the same, Dark Waters will in its modest, steadfast way make your blood boil. And that will do.
Rob Bilott (Ruffalo) is a West Virginia native and Cincinnati attorney for a large law firm, Taft Stettinius & Hollister, with a speciality in defending chemical companies. Just after he’s made a partner, a West Virginia farmer named Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp) turns up in his office barking about his dead cattle and the DuPont plant next door. He dumps a box of VHS tapes at Bilott’s feet.
It’s only the mention of Bilott’s grandmother that gives him pause. Bilott’s colleague Tom Terp (Tim Robbins) overhears the encounter but assures Bilott discretion. “You can be from West Virginia, Rob. I won’t tell anyone.”
Bilott is accustomed to representing the corporate side of such disputes, but he’s moved by Tennant’s case. He has warm memories of visiting the farms in the area as a child and milking cows. And Tennant, gruff and furious, is hard to ignore. Nearly all his 200 cows have suffered enlarged organs and other deformities. A field of his is littered with graves like a battlefield. A nearby creeks runs from a DuPont landfill.
Bilott takes the case over the concerns of his colleagues. But the scope of the case grows exponentially. Bilott, whose story was chronicled in an engrossing and detailed 2016 New York Times story by Nathaniel Rich, goes from a 1999 lawsuit on behalf of Tennant to a 2001 class action involving several West Virginia communities. Through methodical research and investigation, he traces the pollution affecting Tennant’s fame to DuPont’s use of PFOA, or perfluorooctanoic acid.
The substance, which DuPont began using in 1951 by purchasing it from 3M, is used in Teflon for things like nonstick frying pans and for firefighting foam. It was created during the Manhattan Project but by now, it’s in all of us. Virtually every human and animal has traces of it in their system, whether it came through tap water or an umbilical cord. It’s called a “forever chemical” because it never breaks down, and can build up in the blood and organs. DuPont dumped thousands of pounds of PFOA in the Ohio River.
Dark Waters, made relatively quickly by Hollywood standards, is the backstory on a legal drama that’s still unfolding.
Where Haynes excels is in teasing out the personal and professional connections that mingle throughout. When Bilott grows aggressive in the investigation into DuPont, he’s breaking with decorum. He’s part of the old-boy network that works to protect companies like DuPont.
It can seem like there are too many corporate exposes. While they could use some new angles and perhaps fewer lawyer protagonists, I suspect that’s not the problem. Dark Waters plays like a Chernobyl for America. Unfortunately, we probably need a lot more of these.