A little titbit about me – I don’t usually go too hard at the cinema in the first few months following Oscar season, knowing that whatever I miss, I’ll be able to catch up on come years end, either through DVD, VOD or streaming. I make a list of what’s gone by, perhaps catch some reviews online and then chose what I deem is a must to round out my viewing for the year (to the best of my ability). The movie industry coming to a halt during corona-times has brought forward my cinema catch-up period to now. Last year I choose not to review catch-up movies, saving my analysis for the grandest of movies I had paid to see at the cinema. Streaming services, particularly Netflix, have forged an alternative path to viewing must-see new content, particularly in the past twelve months, with movies like The Irishman and Marriage Story, and necessity during lockdown aside, I honestly feel myself becoming more comfortable with my home-movie setup and keen to catch up on some cinema at home, with as much vigour as if I was scoffing my popcorn and sipping my soda in my local cinema’s comfy red chairs. Let’s hope cinemas never die, and come back soon; I’ll be in line day 1 when my local cinema reopens.
The first movie I’ve chosen to pull out of the catch-up bucket is Dark Waters. Directed by Todd Haynes, Dark Waters follows lawyer Robert Bilott, as he investigates the makers of Teflon, DuPont, when West Virginian farmer Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp) brings to his attention a sickness spreading through livestock near a local DuPont chemical plant. I went into Dark Water knowing a little about the story ahead of me, and expecting to come out angered. I saw that Mark Ruffalo was executive producer on this movie, no doubt mining for a similarly disturbing true story after his role in Spotlight brought him critical acclaim. As I’m getting older, time goes by, and I’m coming across more and more conspiracies and cover-up stories that have taken place in my lifetime; they’re harder to watch, as I can’t dismiss them as easily as “errors of the past”, occurring of wartime or under Cold War duress. I think corrupt behaviour just sucks more if it occurs in your time, when you assume people should know better, and do better, but then you never really know what’s really going on.
Dark Waters gets a sense of waiting just right. It took Bilott over 20 years to get any sort of resolution from his investigation into DuPont, with a lot of time simply held up by the nature of the process. The timespan is depicted well through the movie, using the progressive advancement of computer technology, mobile phones, Bilott’s promotions (or regression, depending on the year), Bilott’s colleagues’ promotions and Bilott’s family growing around him, to subtly indicate the years moving on. For 20 years, the weight of this investigation hangs over Bilott when at first, he assumes he can get a quick straightforward answer by asking a favour from DuPont. The most poignant scene comes when DuPont renege on their agreement to care for the affected residents after they are proven culpable – Bilott’s wife Sarah (Anne Hathaway) tries to convince him he’s still done great work in exposing DuPont, but it’s hard for Bilott to consider his clients vindicated without the payoff for his effort. I felt that; sadly or not, we live in a result-based society, and I’m sure we’ve all been there where the relief of reaching the finish line on a difficult task is unexpectedly taken away from you – my sister deleted my nearly-completed saved Super Mario Bros. game when I was 10 once and I was fucking pissed… But in this more serious case, to the victor go the spoils; to the rich stay the assets.
Just like Boston in Spotlight, the location plays an emphasized role in Dark Waters to establish how this conflict occurred. West Virginia is established as hick-country and you get the sense that DuPont are less inclined to care about the townspeople they’ve put in harm’s way because they are poor. I love the films use of snow – the farm scenes are out in the elements, while the lawyers look out at the outside weather from their windows, in suits, under fluorescent lights. The story becomes as much about the legal channels created for success by the affluent system, only meekly challenged at first by the natural evidence of the cattle’s mutated bodies on the ground. The most telling moment of the investigation comes from the realisation that the government’s regulating body (the EPA) can only check in on harmful chemicals that they’ve already been told are harmful by the companies that produce them. Therefore, if DuPont have kept quiet, then there’s no telling what dangerous side-effects could occur from unregulated chemicals. As Robert drives through town, West Virginia and DuPont are purposefully intertwined with ‘Take Me Home, Country Roads’ by John Denver – DuPont’s company advertising is everywhere, even on the towns rubbish bins. DuPont is almost like the Big Brother organisation in town, Mother’s house on the hill overlooking the Bates Motel in Psycho, or at least the overtly obvious accepted savour of the town as it provides the town’s best employment.
Shout out to Bill Camp – here’s an actor I’ve seen around from time to time but only recently realised how talented he is; in a great mini-series called The Night Of, which I highly recommend. In Dark Waters, Camp becomes a barely coherent farmer who is the keenest guy in a room full of educated lawyers. Mark Ruffalo gives Bilott a grim anchored presence; there doesn’t seem to be much going on behind his eyes just to look at him, but his determination and compassion come through in his work. Anne Hathaway has a smallish role for an actress of her calibre as Bilott’s wife, but she brings a certain weight to it where required. And Tim Robbins is greatly understated as Bilott’s lenient and insightfully supportive boss.
Dark Waters has a battle on its hands in making chemistry and corporate law accessible to a layman audience. I think the movie tries to negate the burden of Bilott’s theoretical discovery as much as possible, sometimes rushing his eureka moments in lieu of emphasising the personal strain placed on his homelife. It’s understandable, after all this is a movie, and its incumbent on the producers to find the most relatable way to present it. Unfortunately, a couple of scenes strung together stink up my mind as being poorly written – the courtroom scene, followed by the Christmas party scene; I felt like I was really being handheld through murky exposition. I didn’t come out of Dark Waters as angry as I feel I could have been, considering the very real fallout of DuPont’s bad practice. But the story behind Dark Waters is hugely compelling, and the movie is arguably most important for education. Robert Bilott is another great example of a dutiful and tenacious hero immortalised in film, alongside say, Robert Graysmith in Zodiac and the team at Spotlight. The rating I’m going to give this movie is the lowest rating I would give a movie that I would happily watch again, but I would certainly watch this again.
3.5
Leave a Reply