Dark Waters, instructions for use: a look back at the success of Todd Haynes and Mark Ruffalo
Dark Waters, by Todd Haynes, will be rebroadcast this evening on Arte.
In Dark Waters, Todd Haynes recounts the lonely fight over more than twenty years of an American lawyer who revealed the involvement of the industrial giant DuPont in the pollution and poisoning of the water of the state of Virginia. At the start of 2020, the director of Carol told in First his immersion into a type of cinema previously unknown to him. We are sharing these instructions again on the occasion of the rebroadcast of this successful thriller on television. The editorial team recommends it.
Dark Waters: A great ecological thriller (Review)
Dark Watersinstructions: how to make a successful eco-thriller?
By being carried by an extraordinary story
Initially, there is a stunning article by Nathaniel Rich in the New York Times of January 6, 2016. He details in detail the fight over two decades led by Robert Bilott, the lawyer of a business firm who turned around by transforming himself into a defender of the rights of a rural community in Virginia- Western, against DuPont, giant of the chemical industry responsible for large-scale poisoning (because of a component used in the coating of the Teflon pans that we all use). A story worthy of a horror film which attracted the attention of Mark Ruffalo, whose very left-wing and ecological political commitment is known. The actor contacts Bilott directly, sees in his fight the possibility of a fiction, brings Participant (the production company of Spotlight which earned him an Oscar nomination for supporting role) and launched the first version of a screenplay written by Matthew Michael Carnahan (World War Z). Then, once it was completed, Ruffalo contacted Todd Haynes. So in the middle of post-production of Museum of Wonderswhich would lead him into competition at Cannes, the filmmaker did not hesitate for a second. “The discovery of this article was a decisive element,” he says. It’s impossible to resist the urge to bring to the screen this story which called into question the health of us all. Going through fiction would make it possible to reach a wider audience than a documentary which risked spontaneously only being of interest to those who were already aware of the article. »
By being a fan of the genre
However, we weren’t expecting Todd Haynes, the director of Velvet Goldmine and of Carol in the field of the whistleblower film. But we must always be wary of preconceptions. “I am well aware that this seems far from my concerns as a filmmaker. But Mark was indeed right. Because, as a spectator, I am an absolute fan of the genre. » And the filmmaker spontaneously cites the paranoia trilogy by Alan J. Pakula (Klute, Because of an assassination And The President’s Men) like his bedside works. “Each of these films plunged me behind my screen into a state of crazy anxiety. Because they always offer the point of view of ordinary people at war against structures (the State, big businesses, etc.) supposed to crush them with their power. I, in turn, wanted to confront this particular challenge of a story whose audience a priori knows the ending, with the aim of rediscovering the form of innocence that is mine when I watch these films where I feel so much like I’m living the stories that I forget the ins and outs that I know. »
From Safe to the Museum of Wonder: a look back at the collaboration of Todd Haynes and Julianne Moore
By relying on the main interested party
Robert Bilott was attached to the project, from his first discussions with Ruffalo to the set, where he was present every day. “At first, it worried me because I was afraid that it would deprive me of the possibility of interpreting things in my own way. But it was exactly the opposite. Firstly because Robert is a discreet man, but above all because he had the answers to all our questions: from the color of the pens he used to his precise reaction during this or that event. » It allowed the storyline to be constantly nourished. This desire to go directly to the source is also found in the investment of several of the victims of this health scandal who did not hesitate to plunge back into this nightmare to help prepare the film.
By never playing with reality
Todd Haynes agrees: “We necessarily betray reality by telling it in two hours when it was spread over twenty years. We had to make narrative choices constantly. » But it is indeed this desire to remain faithful to events that guided his work. In the scenario – “nothing we see in the film was invented: everything is inspired by what we have been told or what we have read” –, by integrating actors recruited locally into its cast and also, obviously, by the chosen visual bias. “This kind of film can be told in many different ways on screen. For Erin Brockovich, Steven Soderbergh opted for a certain flamboyance with a cinematographer that I know well, Ed Lachman. he explains, smiling. But for Dark Waterswith the support of the same Lachman, Haynes chose a style as close as possible to documentary. “The only one for me capable of accurately translating what is going on in Robert’s head during his interminable fight. This anxiety that devours him on a daily basis. »
By recounting a symbolic moment in American political life
With Dark Waters, Haynes aims to go further than Robert Bilott’s commitment. That is to say, to show it as a symbol of the collateral damage of triumphant and deregulated capitalism, “become the norm even though they were initially exceptional”. Haynes dates the tipping point to the early 1980s, “with the Reagan presidency, of which Trump is ultimately only the heir. This is why I wanted to start the film in a serene atmosphere, that of before deregulation where the notion of justice still seems to have meaning. And finish it in the utter darkness, that of our world today where the victory of the strongest seems too often inevitable. » Goal achieved.
