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Todd Haynes' meticulous reconstruction of the case brought by a corporate lawyer, played by Mark Ruffalo, against the huge chemical company DuPont, is a devastating indictment of the power of big companies to avoid accountability. Dark Waters tells the story of Robert Bilott, a corporate lawyer with a Cincinnati firm that specialized in defending big chemical corporations against lawsuits. In what seemed a most unlikely turn of events, Bilott became a chief attorney in a lawsuit against one of the biggest chemical companies of all: DuPont. Bilott is played by Mark Ruffalo, who seems older, more dour, and certainly more conventional in this part than other roles I’ve seen him in. He kind of disappears into the character of this real-life attorney, which is something that the best actors know how to do. Rob Bilott is very private, self-contained, quiet and hard-working. The son of an Air Force officer, he lived in several places growing up, including Parkersburg, West Virginia, close to the Ohio border. The story begins with an unexpected visit, in 1998, to Bilott’s Cincinnati office by a farmer from Parkersburg, wanting help with the problem of contamination of his water supply from a nearby DuPont landfill. The farmer, Wilbur Tennant, played by the wonderful character actor Bill Camp, got the lawyer’s name from Bilott’s grandmother, who lives in Parkersburg. Bilott is in the middle of an important meeting, and he’s just been named a partner in the firm, so he is immediately dismissive of Tennant, saying he’ll get him a list of other possible lawyers. But the connection to his grandmother sticks in his mind, so he decides to visit her a while later in Parkersburg, and in the meantime take a look into what this farmer has to say. What he finds is that Tennant’s cattle have been dying mysteriously, about 190 cows perishing from tumors and bloated organs. So Bilott begins, rather modestly at first, by telling his boss, who is played by Tim Robbins, that he wants to file
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