Dark Waters (2019 film)

Dark Waters
Theatrical release poster
Directed by	Todd Haynes
Produced by	Mark Ruffalo Christine Vachon Pamela Koffler
Screenplay by	Mario Correa Matthew Michael Carnahan
Based on	"The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" by Nathaniel Rich
Starring	Mark Ruffalo Anne Hathaway Tim Robbins Bill Camp Victor Garber Mare Winningham Bill Pullman
Music by	Marcelo Zarvos
Cinematography	Edward Lachman
Edited by	Affonso Gonçalves
Production companies	Participant Killer Films
Distributed by	Focus Features
Release dates	November 22, 2019 (2019-11-22) (United States)
Running time	126 minutes
Country	United States
Language	English
Box office	$11.8 million

Dark Waters is a 2019 American legal thriller film directed by Todd Haynes and written by Mario Correa and Matthew Michael Carnahan. It is based on the 2016 article "The Lawyer Who Became DuPont's Worst Nightmare" by Nathaniel Rich, published in The New York Times Magazine. Parts of the story were also reported by Mariah Blake, whose 2015 article "Welcome to Beautiful Parkersburg, West Virginia" was a National Magazine Award finalist, and Sharon Lerner, whose series "Bad Chemistry" ran in The Intercept. Robert Bilott, the principal character in the film, also wrote a memoir, Exposure, detailing his 20-year legal battle against DuPont. The film stars Mark Ruffalo, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman.

Dark Waters was theatrically released in a limited capacity on November 22, 2019, by Focus Features, and went wide on December 6, 2019. The film received positive reviews from critics and has grossed $11 million.

Plot synopsis

Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo), a corporate lawyer from Cincinnati, Ohio working for law firm Taft, Stettinus & Hollister is visited by farmer Wilbur Tennant. Tennant asks that Robert link a number of unexplained deaths in Parkersburg, West Virginia to one of the world's largest corporations, DuPont, and gives Robert a large case of videotapes which Robert puts aside.

While Robert is actually a corporate defense lawyer and he helps chemical companies pollute without breaking the law, he still visits the Tennants' farm as a gesture of respect and kindness, especially since his grandmother still lives in Parkersburg. When he reaches the farm, Tennant reveals that over the past couple of years, he has lost over 190 cows to strange medical conditions such as bloated organs, black teeth, and huge tumors. At the farm, Robert witnesses the problem first hand when Tennant is forced to put down a tumor-covered cow.

Even though he is a defense lawyer who is on very good terms with executives at DuPont, he broaches the subject with DuPont attorney Phil Donnelly (Victor Garber), who politely tells him he is not aware of the specifics but will help out in any way he can. Robert files a small suit so he can gain information through legal discovery of the chemicals that have been dumped on the site. He does not find anything useful, then realizes it is possible that whatever poisoned Tennant's cattle could be something that is not even regulated by the EPA, and so is not listed by the EPA report that he has inquired into. With Tom Terp's reluctant agreement, Robert forces DuPont to turn over all of its information, resulting in angry words between Phil and Robert. In an attempt to hide the truth, DuPont sends Robert hundreds of boxes, hoping to bury the evidence, but Robert goes through the evidence meticulously and finds numerous references to PFOA, a chemical with no references in any medical textbook.

Later, in the middle of the night, Robert's pregnant wife Sarah (Anne Hathaway) finds him tearing the carpet off the floors and going through their pans. He tells her they are being poisoned, and she thinks he has gone mad, until he explains what he has found deep in the DuPont documents: perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA-C8) is a man-made chemical also known as Teflon. It was created for army tanks, but then used by companies in American homes for primarily nonstick pans. DuPont has been running tests of the effect of it for decades, including on animals and on their own employees. Their own studies show that it caused cancer in animals, people, and birth defects in babies of women working on their line – and they never said a thing. They then dumped hundreds of gallons of toxic sludge upriver from Tennant's farm. Even worse, PFOA and similar compounds are forever chemicals, chemicals that do not leave the blood stream and slowly accumulate over time. Teflon is used in everything from nonstick pans to plastics, and it's likely that every American on the planet has PFOA in his/her bloodstream.

Tennant, meanwhile, has been shunned by the entire local community for suing their biggest employer. His house is broken into, and he gets sicker. Robert goes to him with the evidence and tells Tennant to take the settlement DuPont is offering, but Tennant refuses, wanting justice and not wanting to stay silent. He tells Robert he and his wife both have cancer. Robert feels guilty, and so while he gets Wilbur Tennant the settlement, he also writes a brief with all the DuPont evidence and sends it to the EPA and Department of Justice, among others. The EPA fines DuPont $16.5 million.

Robert, however, is not satisfied; he realizes that the residents of Parkersburg will feel the effects of DuPont's PFOA for the rest of their lives. He decides to seek medical monitoring for all residents of Parkersburg in one big class-action suit. However, a call from a local resident, the Kigers, reveals that DuPont sent a letter notifying residents of the presence of PFOA, thus starting the statute of limitations and giving any further action only a month to begin.

Since PFOA is not regulated, they argue that DuPont is liable because the amount in the water was higher than the one part per billion their internal documents argued to be safe. In court, DuPont claims they did a new study that says that 150 parts per billion is safe. Robert is aghast, and the locals begin protesting DuPont and the story becomes national news. DuPont agrees to settle for $70 million. Legally, they are only required to do medical monitoring if scientists prove that PFOA causes the ailments, so an independent scientific review is set up to study the effects of PFOA. If they find in favor, DuPont will have to pay up. In order to get data for it, the firm tells the locals they can get their settlement money after donating blood, and nearly 70,000 people donate to the study.

Over 7 years pass with no result from the study. Tennant passes away, the Kiger family are harassed locally, and Robert faces extreme financial strain, having worked the entire case on the promise of the settlement and continuing to work on it, having to pay scientific experts. He has taken pay cut upon pay cut at the firm, and things are tense with Sarah. When Tom tells him he needs to take another pay cut, Robert collapses, shaking. At the hospitals, the doctors tell Sarah he had an ischemia, or minor stroke, and that he needs to get on new medication and stop dealing with so much stress. Sarah tells Tom to stop making Robert feel like a failure, since he is doing something for people who needed help.

Finally, the scientific review contacts Robert and tells him that PFOA causes multiple cancers and other diseases. At dinner with his family, Robert is informed that DuPont is reneging on the entire agreement. He is angry, saying Tennant told him that there would not be any justice and he did not believe him. So Robert decides to take each defendant's case to DuPont, one at a time. The post-credits information explains that Robert won his first three multi-million dollar settlements against DuPont, and finally DuPont settles the class action for $671 million. PFOA is still in the blood of ninety-nine percent of life on Earth, and thousands of chemicals are still unregulated.

Cast

• Mark Ruffalo as Robert Bilott
• Anne Hathaway as Sarah Bilott
• Tim Robbins as Tom Terp
• Bill Camp as Wilbur Tennant
• Victor Garber as Phil Donnelly
• Mare Winningham as Darlene Kiger
• Bill Pullman as Harry Deitzler
• William Jackson Harper as James Ross
• Louisa Krause as Karla

Production

On September 21, 2018, it was announced that Todd Haynes would direct the film, then titled Dry Run, from a script by Matthew Michael Carnahan, which would be produced by Participant Media along with Mark Ruffalo. In November 2018, Ruffalo was officially set to star in the film.

In January 2019, Anne Hathaway, Tim Robbins, Bill Camp, Victor Garber, Mare Winningham, William Jackson Harper, and Bill Pullman joined the cast of the film, with Christine Vachon and Pamela Koffler producing under their Killer Films banner. Principal photography began on January 14, 2019, in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Release

The film was released in limited theatres on November 22, 2019, before going wide on December 6, 2019.

Reception

Scientific accuracy

In movie Teflon and PFOA-C8 or C8 are used as synonyms, but they are not the same. Teflon or PTFE is polymer of just (CF₂)n, but Perfluorooctanoic acid, PFOA-C8 or C8 is (CF₂)₈-OOH. Because of differences, while their toxicity is different, both are perfluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS) and their toxicologies share mechanisms of action in common. Teflon is chemically very inert until it starts melt and decomposes into other chemicals.

Box office

In its opening weekend the film made $102,656 from four theaters, a per-venue average of $25,651. It expanded to 94 theaters the following weekend, making $630,000. The film went wide in its third weekend of release, making $4.1 million from 2,012 theaters, and then made $1.9 million in its fourth weekend.

Critical response

On Rotten Tomatoes, the film holds an approval rating of 91% based on 129 reviews, with an average rating of 7.28/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Dark Waters powerfully relays a real-life tale of infuriating malfeasance, honoring the victims and laying blame squarely at the feet of the perpetrators." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 73 out of 100, based on 33 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "A–" on an A+ to F scale, while those at PostTrak gave it an average 3.5 out of 5 stars, with 60% saying they would definitely recommend it to a friend.

Economic response

The DowDuPont breakup earlier in the year spun off a new DuPont company that continued to lose value throughout the second half of 2019 as investors grew concerned about the potential liabilities related to the old DuPont's fluoropolymer products. When Dark Waters was released on November 12, DuPont's stock price dropped even further by 7.15 points from 72.18 to 65.03. While the portfolio is now a part of Chemours and the companies settled the public health lawsuits referenced in the film, Chemours sued DuPont, alleging that the former parent company saddled it with onerous liabilities when it failed to prepare financial projections in good faith. Chemours estimated that it would need to pay over $200 million to address environmental damages in North Carolina caused by another PFAS manufacturing facility in that region. (The prior settlement in both West Virginia and Ohio cost $671 million, which was split between the two companies.)

DuPont CEO Mark Doyle, executives, and investors argued in internal statements that much of the movie was not based in fact and DuPont was misconstrued to fit the role of the enemy. According to Doyle, limited public statements were made because “in a situation like this, it just doesn’t do you much good to fight it out in the public eye. That would just drive more and more attention to it.” Executive chairman Ed Breen wouldn’t comment on whether DuPont would take legal action in response to the movie, but he did tell investors, “Obviously, we have a lot of legal folks [that] have been looking at this." Many of the executives with whom this movie draws fault still work, or recently worked at DuPont. 3M saw little to no change in its stock price the day of the film's release, but it was already experiencing a "difficult year" from "potential liabilities due to possible litigation over previous production of PFAS." 3M's stock price closed at 256.01 on January 28, 2018, and by December 1, 2019, it had fallen to 168.27.

Accolades

Award	Date of ceremony	Category	Recipient(s)	Result	Ref(s)
Satellite Awards	December 19, 2019	Best Actor, Drama	Mark Ruffalo	Nominated
		Best Adapted Screenplay	Mario Correa, Matthew Michael Carnahan, Nathaniel Rich	Nominated

See also

• Perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA, also known as C8)
• Perfluorinated alkylated substances (PFAS)
• Timeline of events related to per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS)

External links

• Official website
• Dark Waters at IMDb