Dark Waters

He knows his grandmother, says the farmer, who trudges from the farm on the outskirts of the small town to the high-priced law firm in the metropolis and demands that Robert Bilott take a look at his case. Bilott is a good Christian man and also comes from a modest background, so he goes and looks and doesn't like what he sees at all. Bilott is also conscientious and thorough and persistent, and so it happens that his law firm takes on the chemical giant DuPont, which has been poisoning the water and soil and people with residues of the miracle product Teflon for decades. David versus Goliath is no expression at all.

The screenplay for DARK WATERS is based on an article by Nathaniel Rich that appeared in the New York Times Magazine in 2016; at the time of publication, the legal disputes had already been going on for 19 years. Haynes' dramatisation is therefore by no means just a simple courtroom thriller; rather, it is a bitter realisation that the country and its people are the playthings of large international corporations and that the (still) democratic political structures are corrupt and incapable of freeing themselves from their stranglehold.

If you want, you can also see a complementary piece to SAFE: there the appearance of diffuse physical effects out of the blue, here the painstaking and detailed discovery of causes under low-hanging clouds. In addition to the confidence with which Haynes keeps the complex, sprawling material under control and guides his audience through the lengthy story, Mark Ruffalo (who co-produced the film) is particularly impressive in the role of Bilott. Ruffalo dispenses with everything flamboyant in order, it seems, to design Bilott as a grey mouse in an ill-fitting suit. He then puts a fascinatingly inconspicuous, approachable man with backbone and character into it. And this person could be anyone.

(Text: Alexandra Seitz)