There is something sadly unshocking about Buried with Michael Sheen, a new two-part documentary in which the actor investigates claims of chemical pollution in his native Wales. Perhaps it is because we are used to seeing these sorts of stories in films like Erin Brockovich or Dark Waters, in which Julia Roberts or Mark Ruffalo uncover grand conspiracies of corporate wrongdoing. Sheen would make a fine lead in a film like that, but Buried is something else: a sober, straight-down-the-line piece of televisual journalism. There is no cathartic arc of David-vs-Goliath heroism here, just depressing, necessary legwork.
The scandal in question concerns the alleged contamination of land with PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls), dangerous, now-banned “forever chemicals” that, among other things, are linked to cancer in humans. At the heart of the issue is the Monsanto Company, an American biotech corporation with a wide-ranging history of legal battles, which dumped chemicals in Brofiscin Quarry, South Wales, between 1965 and 1972. (Monsanto no longer exists as the same entity, following a merger with German chemical company Bayer in 2018.) Sheen was first drawn into the subject nearly a decade ago, when he met with Douglas Gowan, a farming consultant and whistleblower. Gowan, who claimed he was the victim of a smear campaign and who faced death threats and alleged intimidation after bringing light to the contamination, died in 2018; his work forms the basis of Buried.
