Tropic Sprockets / Dark Waters

Tropic Sprockets / Dark Waters

By Ian Brockway

The most palpable thing about “Dark Waters” is that it is a real life Apocalypse story. It is the mid-1970s in Parkersburg West Virginia. A group of teens go swimming in a stream, having a wonderful time. Suddenly, another teen finds a deformed frog. The alert is unheard. The kids are having too much fun leaping and playing in the water.

Then in the mid-1990s, a farmer Wilbur Tennant approaches attorney Rob Bilott for help. His cows are, inexplicably, becoming sick and dying at an alarming rate. So begins “Dark Waters,” a film by Todd Haynes, the true story of a DuPont fiasco in West Virginia.

Bilott (Mark Ruffalo, who is also the film’s producer) is approached again by farmer Tennant (Bill Camp) once more and Bilott tours the farmer’s homestead. The farmer shows him tumors, huge gall bladders, diseased livers, and black teeth, all specimens from his cows. It is a graveyard, a farm of absolute frights. When Bilott is about to leave, Tennant spies one of his cows that is deformed and beyond help. The farmer shoots it with a shotgun. The recoil knocks him to the ground. 

Bilott wants to help, but his firm is incredulous, reasoning that there are issues that you just don’t confront and besides, the farmer must have been negligent. Bilott finds more and becomes convinced, but he agrees to work with DuPont’s science panel. Then he finds information that contradicts the research. He is flabbergasted. He agrees to go to a chemical award ceremony to represent the firm and tries to warn a DuPont official who hurls hateful expletives at him.

We might want Ruffalo to become Hulk and smash everything to a pulp, but here the actor is Rob Bilott, a real life hero: kind, empathetic and steadfast. Bilott never gives up.

The story follows a template reminiscent of “Spotlight,” “The Report,” and “All the President’s Men.” The star is Ruffalo as Robert Bilott, who is unfailingly kind and vulnerable as a result. The actor’s eyes tell the entire story: confused, horrified then driven by what’s right and good.

Anne Hathaway is Mrs. Bilott, who is driven to the breaking point along with her husband.

This is another excellent performance by Mark Ruffalo, who portrays the great humble qualities of Rob Bilott within his entire body. Like Lon Chaney Jr., Ruffalo is wonderful in his portrayal of torment. The actor’s face becomes shifting, pliable and his eyes water. 

Bilott discovered that the water and other elements in West Virginia were tainted by C8, a toxic chemical used by DuPont to make the popular Teflon, a non-stick surface used in cooking pans. Teflon is discontinued in the US, but C8 still remains in many industrial products and virtually every human has something of C8 in the bloodstream, known to promote cancer, diabetes, liver and kidney disease.

“Dark Waters” is a genuine disturbing horror story but we are all better for the true tangible heroics of Bilott who was proactive with grace and resolve, pointing the way to corporate consciousness.

Write Ian at [email protected]

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