Photo by Stephen Conroy

 

Dark Waters is a powerful film to watch. The story is based on the cover up by a chemical company around the devastating effects of Teflon. Robert Bilott is a lawyer who reluctantly took the case out of loyalty to his grandmother, and found himself facing off with a behemoth. Yet his conscience would not let him forget the people in a rural West Virginia town whose bodies, and cows, were riddled with cancer. 

 

Robert fought for twenty years, while Dupont hurled money and influence like boulders in his path. 

 

What moved me as much as the enormous fortitude of one man trying to bring a multi billion dollar company to its knees, was his ordinary life. His wife Sarah did not always understand the battle, or the enemy, but she loved her husband, and their three boys, so she kept praying and making supper. 

 

Whatever Sarah was expecting of his career path, I feel confident that this wasn't it. Robert's salary was cut four times, as backlash for the negative publicity against his firm. When Robert's boss called him a failure, she sprang to his defense. 

 

It is ironic that the people in this movie who most quickly describe themselves as successful, are actually the villains. Yet the champion, the hero who doggedly defended farmers in wheelchairs, girls with blackened teeth and mothers with deformed babies, expected no parade for his efforts. 

 

I wish I could shake his hand.