Dark Waters: Dissecting Modern Political Cinema

What does Spotlight, Dark Waters and The Normal Heart have in common? Well... apart from Mark Ruffalo.

Yeah, when he's not fighting aliens he's usually battling it out in court rooms but we're not here to talk about Mark's career trajectory...

What they have in common cinematically is they are all about events that happened within the realms of modern history, about people who were, or are still alive and about political issues that continue to be relevant to society.

These films are interesting. They must maintain a balancing act between a need to stay true to the events that happened (audiences will notice if they don't... they were around when it was happening) and the need to entertain the audience they are also trying to inform.

They are not documentaries even if their overall purpose is essentially to educate. The line between drama and documentary becomes even more blurry in how these films are made and who is involved in making them.

Some might be wondering why The Big Short isn't going to be discussed here. While it does tick a lot of these boxes I would class The Big Short as straying more into the entertainment category. The film is stylized in a way that is meant to keep your attention more than it is to discuss an issue. I would also argue The Big Short is more a re-telling of a historical event than it is a plea for current engagement.

It also doesn't contain a Ruffalo, and is therefore inferior.

In this post I'm going to try and get to the bottom of what works and what doesn't for these films. Why Spotlight won acclaim and Dark Waters is drowning in a sea of mediocre reviews. How The Normal Heart filled in story gaps only to make more of them in the process. How ethical are these films? Who is behind them? Why dramatise other than document?

We have a lot to get through folks.

1. Dark Waters (Todd Haynes, 2020)

A couple of days ago I watched the latest film to come out in this trend, Dark Waters, a film about the chemical defense lawyer who brought down one of the biggest chemical companies in the world and is still continuing to fight against it. I remember briefly hearing about it on the news as a child. I definitely remember use of the term "micro-plastics" but I don't think I would have understood or cared very much about it at the time. This is a case that has been going longer than my life which really is terrifying!

There was a lot that I really liked about this film especially in the tone and the way it was shot. For a film shot on a digital camera (Arri Alexa Mini) this film looks nothing like the pristine court-room dramas audiences are used to. Every frame is filled with digital grain, sickly colours and an overall feeling of ugliness that stays with you throughout the run-time. I like how none of the colours look natural. It's all sulfuric yellows, acidic greens and cold green-blue colours which makes everything look contaminated, even inside Rob Bilott's own home. This is an effective way of showing how the chemicals are part of everyday life but also showing how the case is constant in Bilott's mind. Something he can't stop thinking about even when at home with his young family.

The performances are very good but nothing exceptional and honestly that's where the film lies overall. It's good, but nothing amazing. The plot at times felt like hopping through a wikipedia page about the case leaving us very little time to understand the characters or really connect with them. The purpose of this film felt very much like it's trying to inform over entertain, even though it's shot very cinematically. When I left the cinema I was much more affected by the facts of the case than I was with the film itself. I wondered if I would have had the same response to a documentary about this subject and if so is the dramatisation necessary?

On reflection though I'm not sure if a documentary would have been the best way to present this story. After all I imagine trying to get hold of DuPont representatives or people involved to be quite tricky especially since there are cases still going on. Vital story points and perspectives would likely have been left out. I also imagine a documentary about this would be tricky to make personal without some element of dramatisation. A group of interviews and stock footage would have made something very cold and un-affecting.

That being said, I don't think the revelations made in this film are particularly surprising in dramatised form either. The biggest issue films like Dark Waters face is that the events are so recent that most of the audience have already seen it play out in the news and even if we don't know the full extent we kind of know where it's going. This makes the first half of the film a little dull to watch. While Bilott is trying to figure out what's happening to the farmer's cows the audience are already well aware... it's the water, it's chemicals, it's plastics related.

What's also interesting is the production of this film. The film was made by Participant who also made Spotlight (We'll get back to that). Participant are a production company who aims to make films that "inspires audiences to engage in positive social change". The use of the real people as extras in the film also suggests an element of personal involvement and an almost journalistic approach to the writing.

2. Spotlight (Tom McCarthy, 2015)

Talking of journalism...

Spotlight is a brilliant film that I didn't originally think I'd like. It follows the Spotlight journalism team that works for the Boston Globe papers as they begin to uncover the full extent of the child molestation scandal within the Catholic Church and the decades of cover ups that have kept it silent until now.

From a cinematography point of view the film doesn't look particularly exciting, lots of beige and corporate spaces but somehow there is a cinematic element to it that elevates the film to the scale that the case deserves. As with Dark Waters, Spotlight also left me more affected by the events it was talking about than the story itself but I did get more character out of this ensemble. I did care about them, I wanted them to succeed and there felt like an element of danger even though I did kind of know the outcome.

What works to Spotlight's advantage is that there is an element of distance between the story being told in the film and the story of the events they're reporting about which would have been a very different film. It's still emotive, it's still about real cases but that kind of detachment allows the film to make dramatic choices that it otherwise wouldn't have been able to do. Out of the two films I consider Spotlight to be the more affecting and the more engaging film overall because it felt more like it was telling a story than telling a case.

The other major difference is that while Dark Waters takes place over a span of decades, Spotlight takes place specifically between 2001 and 2002, bringing the film up to date at the end with it's end credits. The issues in the film are still issues but the incident itself is a contained narrative within those two years so the flow of the story and the discovery of information feels more organic. The film is less about the incidents themselves and more about the cover up which exposed huge gaps in the law in relation to the Catholic Church especially in areas of America where the church holds a lot of power. This makes it a perfect fit for Participant pictures. There is still action to be taken about this issue even if it's over a decade since the Spotlight team brought it forward to the public.

Spotlight couldn't be a documentary because the documentary would be about the cases themselves. I can't imagine a documentary about the people working for the paper that investigated them working as well as this dramatisation. The performances in this film are also a vital part of what makes it work. Unlike Dark Waters there are some very notable performances here which really pulled me in and made me engage instead of simply observing.

3. The Normal Heart (Ryan Murphy, 2014)

The Normal Heart is a very different beast but in my opinion is still very relevant to this discussion if only just to contrast to the other films discussed. A film adaptation of the play by Larry Kramer, The Normal Heart tells the true story of Ned Weeks, a gay activist attempting to raise awareness of HIV AIDS during the early 1980's.

Out of all of these dramatisations, The Normal Heart is the most dramatised. It's also in my opinion the most emotionally engaging and cinematic. The Normal Heart doesn't go for straight facts, it instead focuses on the emotions of the characters. You might be wondering why a film set in the 80's should be considered modern events cinema. Well, like the other two The Normal Heart uses its end credits to bring the issue into a modern context. AIDS is still an issue all around the world and the film does take an activism perspective of this.

However, it's made under very different production contexts. Unlike the relatively low budget, indie, social action based productions of Dark Waters and Spotlight, The Normal Heart has HBO Films, Plan B Entertainment and Blumhouse to push it forward. None of these are specifically activism based. It makes me wonder what version of The Normal Heart we might have gotten under Participant. The Normal Heart also never got a cinema release like the other two. It's a TV Movie which gave it flexibility in terms of what it could show but restricted it's audience.

What The Normal Heart lacks in accuracy it makes up for in emotional realness. This movie never fails to make me cry and pulls you into the horror of the epidemic. Out of all the films covering this subject including documentaries this one has that gut wrench feeling to it which in a strange way makes it feel like the most authentic. After watching this movie I feel like I knew these people and it feels like I lost them. The performances are all incredible.

In many ways The Normal Heart is closer to Dark Waters in the fact that it's a story happening to the characters instead of the characters discovering the story like in Spotlight but more like Spotlight it doesn't have the time jumps that makes Dark Waters so hard to emotionally engage with.

An interesting point is also that the original play was written and performed in the 80's. At the time this was a production about a very modern event possibly written with an agenda to help sympathise the audience to those suffering from AIDS. Therefore if the emotions are enough to get me teary eyed now I can only imagine the impact it would have had on those who saw it at the time.

On the flip side this film also seems more polished and also sellable. The Normal Heart is a studio production that is tailored to an audience they know already exists. While it might be too cynical to say that this film was made solely because they knew it would be successful, there is definitely less risk bringing a well known tear jerker play onto the screen than there is in telling the story of an ongoing court case against chemical companies or pedophilia within the church.

4. Conclusion

Modern events cinema is a strange form of filmmaking. In some ways it can feel quite morally dubious. Jumping on a horrific event in order to make a profit by turning it into a piece of entertainment. That being said, without these films a lot of people would never understand the entirety of what went on and the human emotions behind the cold hard facts we are given on the news. There is an element of emotional truth which I think needs to be present in order to make these films worth watching. Spotlight definitely has it as does The Normal Heart.

Dark Waters tries but doesn't quite break the surface.

I encourage everyone to watch these films and form their own opinions. Spotlight especially is on Netflix and is well worth a watch!

Dark Waters 3/5