“I’m still here.”
Todd Haynes, mostly known for his striking art films, including one of the decade’s best, Carol, is remarkably restrained and in focus directing his new film Dark Waters. The elegant artistry that has defined his long and shockingly unprolific career is hardly detectable in the environmental thriller. Yet, the film, based on a true story, nonetheless offers a stirring and often infuriating story of the cyclical and corporate greed that affected West Virginia’s employees, neighbors, and even the world at large. The story centers around Cincinnati lawyer Rob Billot (Mark Ruffalo), a simple man who specializes in defending the very type of companies he eventually fights. When a West Virginia farmer, Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), brings evidence to Billot that shows a local DuPont plant is poisoning his herd of cattle, Rob battles the various conflicts in his life – his firm, his family, and his career as a result of taking the farmer’s case. The case, however, proves to be exponentially more complex and far-reaching than he initially thought.
Sometimes through it – and other times despite it – the conventionality of Dark Waters lets open a frequently stirring and meticulous story filled with all of the tropes of a strong narrative like this – obsession, corporate greed, socioeconomic grievances, home strife, and more. Hayne’s subdued touch most often shines in his attempts to de-Hollywoodize the film. Mark Ruffalo carries a bad haircut and a slouching, almost hunchback form. Anne Hathaway, the overt wrinkles of time showing in each scene, moves back and forth between frustration and empathy, with jealousy as the mediator. And Bill Camp, the film’s real star, let’s loose his broken southern accent and big bushy eyebrows as the film’s central metaphor – the everyday hard-working good guys always finish last. It is in Hayne’s systematic approach where the film ultimately succeeds. Rob’s painstaking detective work shows through complete detail, whether through methodical enactments of chemistry, public health, and regulatory law, that eventually, the personal price he pays in his decades-long battle against corporate stonewalling and delays is representative of the continuous fight we all suffer against our own personal Goliath.
This is less a story about Daniel winning than it is about Daniel persevering. Other underrated elements include Edward Lachman’s textured and gritty cinematography or even Tim Robbins and Bill Pullman as veteran attorneys who bring terrific character actor work that weigh the film down to its roots. But the film’s real intentions seem to show during after the final reel, highlighting the various cameos of the real people who suffered in this story, Tennant’s real-life brother among them. Even when the second half often strains for attention (you have seen this story 100 times before), Haynes elevates a typical job of a director-for-hire into another sturdy addition in the “you knew” genre.
3.5/5 STARS
