Dark Waters (2020)

Director: Todd Haynes

A corporate defence attorney Rob Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) investigates a local farmers’ plea that his livestock are being poisoned. As he delves deeper into the mystery of Wilbur Tennant’s (Bill Camp) fallen cattle, it starts to emerge that a chemical company named DuPont may have something to do with it.

Dark Waters is the eighth feature from director Todd Haynes (Carol) and is based on the New York Times magazine article named “The Lawyer WhoBecame DuPont’s Worst Nightmare.” The dramatic retelling of this relatively unknown American scandal is based solely around the central performance of Mark Ruffalo. His every man like qualities works wonderfully at anchoring this rather extraordinary situation.

After discovering Wilbur Tennant is an acquittance of his grandmother, Rob Bilott decides to look into his call for help and visit the farm in the outskirts of a little town named Parkersburg. Once arriving, Tennant tells Rob that he lost over 190 cows in the past few year due to irregular medical conditions. Upon the sight of this grey skied graveyard, Rob takes up his case and investigate DuPont, a company he would normally protect.

As Rob pushes further onto exposing DuPont for directly harming Mr Tennant and his family’s livelihoods, it soon becomes apparent that the harm is not only to Tennant’s family but to all the residents of Parkersburg.

Dark Waters works very effectively by drip feeding the key pieces of information discovered while highlighting the steep psychological torment Rob and his direct family endures as he persists in uncovering this mass cover-up. While we have seen many films like this before in either Erin Brockovich & Pelican Brief, Todd Haynes and his DP Edward Lachman focus on their experience in documentary filmmaking to ground the story. Even with savvy surveillance shots or the wonderful wide angles of the bleached Cincinnati skyline protruding out like the tar-stained teeth of Tenant’s cattle, the film never wanes from Rob Bilott.

Given the huge revelations to the horrific face of corporate America, Haynes and Lachman echo the elements of a film like All The Presidents Men, to maintain the story never becomes too “wishy-washy” or overdramatic.

As the story unfolds, there are many moments where it appears Rob has hit a dead end or maybe the task of trying to fight a monolithic entity is just too a great a task. And maybe it is easier to give up his investigation for the betterment of his own and his family’s wellbeing. But in a crucial sequence between Rob and his wife Sarah, played brilliantly by Anne Hathaway, he reveals all the details he has amassed over the decades of his investigation. As all is revealed, Rob’s crusade not only makes sense, it emboldens his perseverance.  

While Dark Waters doesn’t dramatically change the genre of the political drama, it certainly manages to effectively hit home the existential crisis rooted in the film’s poisoned heart.