Teflon Terror

Dark Waters – 2019 – PG13

Immersed for two and a half hours in the ugly Dark Waters world of institutional corruption and human greed, I left the theater and drove directly to Safeway to pick up a few last minute items for Thanksgiving. Studying canned fruit options, I started reliving teenage memories of mixing Dole fruit cocktail with newly invented Kraft Cool Whip, proudly declaring it a centerpiece holiday salad. Completely lost in daydreams of Thanksgivings past, I turned around and there staring at me was a display of nonstick frying pans! C8 alert! Corporate greed, government sellouts, Wall Street espionage, stacked court decisions, arson, Mad Cow disease, birth defects, cancer—all traced back to PFOA or C8, chemical talk for toxic fluorocarbons, aka Teflon! Doomsday in the canned fruit aisle! 

Dark Waters is an environmental drama based on the true David and Goliath story of Cincinnati corporate attorney Robert Bilott (Mark Ruffalo) who goes up against DuPont, a mega machine of greed. The story starts in 1989 with Bilott pulled from a partner meeting to be confronted by West Virginia cattle farmer, Wilbur Tennant (Bill Camp), who suspects DuPont of contaminating his Appalachian farm’s water supply, killing off his cattle. Tennnant, referred by Bilott’s grandmother, is outraged, agonizing over his bovine “like family” die-off, burying each cow in individual graves until the deaths are too numerous to keep up. 

In a flash of costuming brilliance, “Black Suits meet Bib Overalls,” the Blue Collar vs. Corporate America showdown is set for the rest of the film. Thus begins a lengthy eco-crusade—that is still playing out to this day. If there is a way, legal or not, for DuPont execs to avoid, defer, bury, squash, squelch, threaten and delay justice, they do it and with impunity.  But once Bilott is made a believer—after wading through a dusty box of Tennant’s  VHS evidence tapes and a frightening up close and personal mad cow encounter—he doggedly stalks and sues DuPont in perpetuity. Currently, Bilott is bringing a major class action lawsuit against eight different chemical companies, on behalf of everyone in the United States.

Dark Waters reinforces so much of the sad state of affairs we face in our country, brace yourself for your own reality check. Mine was Teflon in Safeway. Yours could be pretty much anywhere given the pervasive use of toxic chemicals. Choose your poison. On top of a bleak glimpse at the squalid underbelly of capitalism, the movie plods along dragging us through a visual timeline that starts in 1975 and phases out at 2015. I found myself calculating how many dreary years were left. If you’re hoping for an Erin Brockovich happy ending, best stay home. Dark Waters is a depressing commentary on the staggering power of corporate greed. PFOA, a chemical compound engineered to create fabulously successful Teflon is now used in everything from raincoats to pizza boxes, infiltrating 99% of human life. DuPont wields so much influence at the highest levels of government that the conglomerate can freely produce this chemical poison, still completely unregulated, without so much as a personal injury shrug. DuPont even ran and then concealed their own studies that conclusively linked PFOA to employee illnesses and birth defects. Now we all know about it. Yet, nothing changes. Surely, for the sake of public health we can do better! Sadly, it doesn’t appear to be a matter of can’t so much as won’t.  

A Nov. 19 letter written by 17 West Virginia Republicans to the U.S House of Representatives Committee on Oversight and Reform, which had a hearing earlier that day, “Toxic, Forever Chemicals: A Call for Immediate Federal Action on PFAS,” had very little to say about the hearings, but did come out swinging at the film, “We ask that you be aware that the PFAS-centered film ‘Dark Waters’ irresponsibly uses tired stereotypes about the people of West Virginia. The film’s portrayal does not reflect reality and can do real damage to our economy…So either the filmmakers are fabricating science or they are relying on vulgar stereotypes to sell movie tickets. Neither is acceptable to us. An irresponsible film like ‘Dark Waters’ puts tourism jobs at risk based on a lie.”

Based on a lie…Is this our legacy?