“ErinBrockovich,” a Steven Soderbergh film, featured the talented Julia Roberts who depicted
the charismatic, sharp-witted Brockovich, an informally educated, hard working,
single mother. The real Brockovich
worked alongside Ed Masry, who, in the movie, is played by Albert Finney. Erin played a vital role in organizing the
$333 million lawsuit against Pacific Gas and Electric (PG&E)[1]. PG&E had contaminated the groundwater of
a small town named Hinkley, located in the Mojave Desert of California. The contamination was caused by the use of
hexavalent chromium, which can cause anything from eye irritation to fatal
cancers[2]. Thus, Brockovich took action to avenge the
sickened community. The legal battle
that Brockovich worked so tirelessly to win would end up being crowned as the
largest in action lawsuit in United States’ history[3]. And Roberts’ depiction of the headstrong heroine
would result in her earning an Oscar nomination and consequent win[4]. However, the film, in its entirety, once
tested and put under heated pressure, popped and fizzled as it pathetically
melted into a meager, unenergetic characterization of the historic series of events.
And in turn, through the combined forces
of Soderbergh and his cast, Brockovich’s integrity was relentlessly sexified as Robert’s neckline plunged
far down into the depths of cinematic complacency and filthily tumbled with the
feebly portrayed yet actually
heinous PG&E corporation.
The film did indeed truthfully
follow the historic timeline and events composing that very timeline, however
it did so in fashion that painfully painted a glossy coating over the work as a
whole. This consequentially defocused
the piece’s energy and socially historic meaning. The acclaimed movie critic, Roger Ebert,
described the movie’s self distancing from its thematic center most correctly
when he avowed, “‘Erin
Brockovich’ has a screenplay with the depth and insight of a cable-TV
docudrama, and that won't do for a 126-minute ‘major production.’
Maybe it's just that the movie gives us
so little to focus on that they win by default.”[5] Overall, the movie lacked a defined
concentration on not necessarily collective precision, but rather, on
historical accuracy.
The film’s choice in characters further blurred the
cinematic conceptualizations by portraying Robert’s Brockovich as a blatantly
sexy, stereotypically not blonde blonde, in a desert-like sea full of ugliness. This took away from the meaningful, filmic
net worth by revamping Brockovich’s purpose – this also diminished the
feministic undertones of the movie. The
only other character that was smeared in a nice light without appearing as a
shriveled up prune was PG&E as a corporation. In turn, the movie had no harsh antagonist –
merely an amorphous company that was causing bad stuff – and thus, this automatically downplayed Robert’s depiction
of the protagonist, Brockovich. For, the
film lacked evil, the dying necessity for a hero. Instead, it smeared itself with that evil’s
effects, effects that may indeed be historically precise, but drain the movie
of the ability to fully depict itself in a historically accurate light.
In total, the movie, “Erin Brockovich”
stayed true to the events that took place in the small town of Hinkley leading
up to 1996. It precisely depicted the
effects of the hexavalent chromium and Brockovich and Masry’s work to avenge
the sickened and fallen. However,
Soderbergh’s work failed to achieve the historic precision that it needed to
retain its viewers’ attentions and achieve absolute acclaim. The movie was tinted with a glossy coating
that sexified Brockovich and diminished the movie’s feministic undertones. In the end, the movie “Erin Brockovich”
manipulated a historical situation to play to societal norms instead of
manifesting a surge of societal willpower to continue the change that the real
Brockovich initiated.
- J. A. Kind
[1] http://www.brockovich.com/my-story/, Erin
Brockovich
[2]
https://www.osha.gov/SLTC/hexavalentchromium/healtheffects.html
[3] http://abcnews.go.com/US/erin-brockovich-fighting-neighbors-toxic-drinking-water/story?id=15120603
[4] http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0000210/awards
[5]
http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/erin-brockovich-2000, Roger Ebert, 2000
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