Respond to these rapid questions in our Dark Waters quiz and we will tell you which Dark Waters character you are. Play it now.
A lone crusader against the corrupt system, “Dark Waters,” starring Mark Ruffalo as an attorney trying to hold the DuPont chemical corporation accountable for dumping toxic waste in West Virginia, is in the vein of films such as “The Insider,” “A Civil Action,” and “The Verdict,” and is set in West Virginia. That lineage is honored by director Todd Haynes (“Carol,” “Mildred Pierce”), who conveys to viewers the sense of what a long, tedious, and spiritually draining process this can be by having even the best-looking and most charismatic actors in the ensemble appear onscreen looking as if they are living in the same reality as the rest of us and are exhausted by it.
Mr. Ruffalo portrays Robert William Billott, an attorney for Taft Stettinius & Hollister, a Cincinnati, Ohio-based law firm that represents major corporations such as DuPont, one of the world’s largest chemical manufacturers. As a result of personal ties and against the wishes of his own colleagues, Billott decides to assist Wilbur Tennant, a lowly cattle farmer from Parkersburg, West Virginia who is in desperate need of assistance (played by Bill Camp, with beetle brows that make him look like Beau Bridges from a distance). It has become apparent to Wilbur that his cows have been sickening, going insane, and dying at an alarming rate, and he believes this is due to DuPont poisoning the nearby water supply. The evidence supports his claim, but proving it will take time and effort. It may also be difficult to establish a chain of intentionality that could hold DuPont liable for cleanup and restitution.
It is a detective story with a nice guy lawyer at its center, and that is what follows. In Ruffalo’s portrayal of Robert Billott, the character comes across as a human version of Droopy the Dog, a cartoon character who defeated flashier, more volatile opponents by remaining unflappable, indomitable and polite, and by showing up in unexpected places when his adversaries least expected it. Haynes employs wide shots to draw attention to Ruffalo’s diminutive stature in comparison to his imposing co-stars like Tim Robbins (who plays Billott’s boss Tom Terp). The actor’s turtle-in-a-shell body language further emphasizes the fact that this intelligent, ethical man is outgunned on all fronts, including the financial, political, and scientific fronts, when it comes to proving that DuPont has been dumping toxic waste into West Virginia soil, causing cancer, distemper, and rotting teeth in humans and animals alike.
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Fans of environmental news (or who have read about the actual case that inspired “Dark Waters”) will recognize that the farmer’s plight serves as a springboard into a larger discussion about perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), a byproduct of teflon, one of DuPont’s most profitable postwar products. Ultimately, this leads to a more comprehensive and alarming examination of toxic chemicals that are spread through the water supply, enter human bodies, and remain in them.
Dark Waters Quiz
And it is this final piece of information that lends the film its gloomy undertones. Especially at its most controlled and insinuating, “Dark Waters” is reminiscent of paranoid thrillers from the 1970s such as “The Parallax View,” “Chinatown,” and “The Killing.” It’s inevitable that you’ll see a story about how bad things are because of corporate influence over government and the economy in those kinds of movies; however, when you see how bad things are, it’s shocking how bad things are, highlighting the implicit question: why fight if the bad guys have already won? You should fight because it’s the right thing to do, and because even if justice is guaranteed, it’s a public service of a lesser magnitude to demonstrate to others how broken the system is.
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Even the best examples of this type of film suffer from a formulaic quality that can be found in even the best examples of this type of film. “Dark Waters” is written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan (“Lions for Lambs”) from a New York Times Magazine story, and shepherded by co-producer Mark Ruffalo, an environmental activist. Billott’s relationship with his supportive but understandably exhausted wife Sarah, played by Anne Hathaway, is particularly poignant. This is reflected not only in the storytelling rhythms, which twist and turn pretty much when you expect them to (a satisfying triumph followed by a deflating reversal of fortune), but also in the portrayal of their marriage. The film follows Sarah as she gives birth to two children over the course of a story that takes more than a dozen years to play out, all the while worrying about DuPont-caused birth defects. However, Sarah is only given a primarily advisory or sounding-board role, and the film is never less convincing than when Sarah is announcing that she is more than just The Wife in a heroic man’s story. Although it’s difficult to say how this could have been avoided, Billott serves as both our guide through the story and the audience’s mirror. Nonetheless, there may have been a way to avoid making Sarah sound as though she’s arguing about reviews that haven’t been written yet.
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Although understated, “Dark Waters” is still an effective and engaging example of a rapidly fading genre of film, resonating with contemporary feelings of hopelessness in the face of blatant corruption on display every day in the United States and throughout the world. The director, Todd Haynes, may not appear to be the type of director you’d expect to be attached to this type of project at first glance. In addition to his keen eye for the narratively meaningful camera move (note how frequently the film begins a scene in darkness or by focusing on an out-of-focus element, then gradually brings the image into focus), he possesses an undeniable talent for working with actors (Victor Garber as the CEO of DuPont is a perfect distillation of the nice-guy arrogance of the super-rich). While the script is strong in showing the hero going through the necessary steps to reach a breakthrough, it falls short in showing him doing the actual work, such as sitting alone on the floor of a storage room and sorting through hundreds of boxes of evidence documents, or reading an official DuPont letter repeatedly until he realizes it doesn’t say what everyone else thinks it says. (Can you tell me how often movies make reading comprehension a cinematic experience? Almost never, in fact.)
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In addition, the film makes sense as part of the HCU (Haynes Cinematic Universe). Fans of the director’s previous work will recognize parallels between this film and “Safe,” which is about a woman who suffers from an environmental illness. Additionally, it calls to mind Haynes’ self-aware period pieces “Mildred Pierce” and “Far From Heaven,” which were both about the ways in which social norms (be they sexist, racist, homophobic, or, in this film’s case, class-based) allow the status quo to remain in place.
Despite its patience and sardonic humour, this is an angry film, and with good reason. The film’s most rousing moments find Ruffalo transformed into a Jimmy Stewart- or Tom Hanks-level idealistic Everyman, railing against the world’s evils while also taking the time to explain how they became entrenched, and how it is still possible to fight them, albeit in a small way and at great personal cost, to bring about change.
For more personality quizzes check this: 100 Wolf Quiz.
