Dark Waters

Portraying the Hulk in the MCU, a wizard in Now You See Me and a sex addict in Thanks for Sharing. Mark Ruffalo is one of my favorite actors. And seeing him in “based on a true story-investigation movies” Spotlight and most recently Dark Waters definitely hasn’t made it worse.

⚠ SPOILER ALERT! ⚠

The last mention is actually produced by Ruffalo himself, and portrays still active lawyer Rob Bilott. Bilott gets presented with a doomed-to-fail case by a farmer from his rural hometown. The farmer is convinced that chemical industry giant DuPont has poisoned his creek through the adjacent landfill, making him loose the vast majority of his cattle and in effect livelihood. The case leads Billot on a path discovering the dark secrets of the self-regulated chemistry industry, unveiling the scandalous problems of teflon, among various other everyday products from the American innovation treasure hoard.

I’m so captivated by people pushing through despite almost the complete lack of reward. What drives them? How can they stay so strong to their principles? And to think that Billot did it for more than 20 years! There’s a scene where Billot’s wife (portrayed by Anne Hathaway) confronts his boss (Tim Robbins, some lineup huh?) after Billot has a TIA. She says:

I need you to stop making him feel like a failure.

…

[The firm], it’s not just a job. To him it’s… It’s home. And he was willing to risk all that for a stranger who needed his help. Now, you and I may not know what that is, but it’s not failure.

That’s what always leaves me baffled after movies like this. How can someone have the audacity, endurance and courage to go up against something like that? It certainly gives you hope for humanity, but also makes me wonder. I’m fairly confident that I could never do it. Facing all the odds. At some point I might review more of my watch history in this sense, but for now a little list of similar stories are listed below, how pioneers face incredible odds and stand up for what they think is the right path.

• Moneyball, I won’t even mention Aaron Sorkin now. Damn, that guy’s good.
• The Comey Rule. I mean come on, and reading Comey’s books the guy’s even nicer!?
• I already mentioned Spotlight…

One of the key takeaways here is also the way that these people lead. Strong leadership is so hard to come by, at least I’ve yet to see enough of it, and of course I wish I had more of that. But who knows, maybe one day, after I’ve watched enough of these other folks doing it I’ll actually have the courage to do it myself.

Kudos Ruffalo and all you others portraying the stories we all so desperately need!