Dark Waters

There’s a scene in Todd Haynes’ Dark Waters in which cor­po­rate defence attor­ney-turned-envi­ron­men­tal lawyer Robert Bilot (Mark Ruf­fa­lo) and his wife Sarah (Anne Hath­away) have a tense con­ver­sa­tion about the case he’s work­ing on, prov­ing that Amer­i­can chem­i­cals giant DuPont has been know­ing­ly poi­son­ing the land of Park­ers­burg, West Virginia.

In one telling shot, the pair stand alone in the night, illu­mi­nat­ed beneath the gar­ish neon sig­nage of a Beni­hana steak­house. The two small fig­ures pale in com­par­i­son with the red colos­sus of cap­i­tal­ism loom­ing over them, ugly and intru­sive against the sleek dark­ness. It’s an exquis­ite moment of post­mod­ern despair redo­lent of the haunt­ing sen­si­bil­i­ty of Edward Hopper’s famous 1942 paint­ing ​‘Nighthawks’, itself an icon of Amer­i­can realism.

The term ​‘real­ism’ isn’t usu­al­ly asso­ci­at­ed with Todd Haynes, whose work is pow­ered by a more fan­tas­ti­cal visu­al lan­guage. But cer­tain­ly the themes he has dealt with in the past remain as vital now as they did when he began his career. Dark Waters, based on a true sto­ry, is no excep­tion, as it exam­ines how insti­tu­tions estab­lished to pro­tect soci­ety are built to fail, and it is all the more remark­able for its under­stat­ed inten­si­ty. There are no grand court­room spec­ta­cles, or intense, half-shout­ed mono­logues; instead, there are moments of del­i­cate lev­i­ty, jux­ta­posed with bleak­ness root­ed in harsh reality.

Bilott has spent his entire career in Cincin­nati get­ting cor­po­ra­tions off the legal hook, when an asso­ciate of his elder­ly grand­moth­er per­son­al­ly seeks out his legal coun­sel, con­vinced his cat­tle are being poi­soned by an indus­tri­al waste site next to his prop­er­ty. Some­what reluc­tant­ly, Bilott begins to look into the case, though a life­time help­ing envi­ron­men­tal giants avoid legal trou­ble can’t pos­si­bly pre­pare him for the uphill bat­tle he faces – one that lasts two decades, and expos­es the pub­lic to a harsh real­i­ty about the seem­ing­ly innocu­ous prod­ucts in just about every Amer­i­can home.

Yet even with irrefutable proof of malfea­sance, there’s often a sense of unwill­ing­ness among the larg­er pub­lic to believe those in pow­er would know­ing­ly fail us, or even an apa­thy regard­ing our col­lec­tive pow­er to change the sys­tem. To put Bilott’s case sim­ply: you’re damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.

There is a qui­et, creep­ing sense of dread through­out Dark Waters, which blends hor­ror and neo-noir ele­ments with the struc­ture of a polit­i­cal thriller to cre­ate an absorb­ing, fierce­ly orig­i­nal end prod­uct. Ruf­fa­lo does his best work in years as Bilott, furi­ous, exhaust­ed, ter­ri­fied and deter­mined as he fights against an ene­my across the years who always seems too big to fail. His obses­sive­ness evokes mem­o­ries of David Fincher’s Zodi­ac, but there is no ser­i­al killer on the loose here, only dis­in­ter­est­ed lawyers and busi­ness­men who are not afraid of Bilott because they cre­at­ed the sys­tem he’s fighting.

It is a sear­ing indict­ment of fail­ure at the high­est lev­el of com­mand; a denounce­ment of pow­er struc­tures still in place. It leaves you with an uneasy feel­ing in the pit of your stom­ach. After all, how many sto­ries like this are out there, yet to come to light? Good luck sleep­ing with that haunt­ing thought on your mind.