Wednesday, January 02, 2013
"Promised Land": is it too risky for America to develop natural gas on its heartlands?
The “Promised Land” seems to be western Pennsylvania, maybe
thirty miles from Pittsburgh, where the Alleghenies slowly recede into
Ohio. In this movie, directed by Gus Van
Sant, Matt Damon plays a “consultant”, really a door-to-door salesman, for a
natural gas company looking to acquire drilling leases and rights on farmland
over the Marcellus Shale formation. Yes, this film, from Participant Media and
Focus Features (Universal), plays like a docudrama, almost a stage play, about
the fracking (or fracturing) controversy.
I visited the area myself Veterans Day weekend, particularly
around Cadiz, Ohio and Latrobe, PA (see the “Issues” blog, Nov. 12, 2012). The only big setup I saw was near Cadiz.
There are really two issues in this movie. The first concerns the wisdom of using
fracking as part of our domestic energy policy.
The Pickens Plan says that we can free ourselves from dependence on
foreign oil by emphasizing natural gas, and using sources that actually do
produce much more oil also (as opposed to coal, or “clean coal” – with all the
aesthetic and environmental objections to mountaintop removal). It may well be true that the US can become
energy independent. Can it do so while decreasing carbon emissions?
Can it do so also without damaging the farmland
it mines, including release of toxin and damage to the water table and even to
livestock? The film poses this question in economic terms (approaching blackmail): farmers (facing foreclosures and cutbacks in federal help from "fiscal cliff" problems) can become millionaires if they risk the viability of their land, often held in families for generations.
The second issue in the movie is the way people work and the
way people have to struggle with their lots in life. Steve Butler (Damon) has
been selling leases one at a time, but is under pressure from his company
Global and his boss (Frances McDormand) to sign everyone and to prevent or
stave off a vote in the town on allowing leases at all. He meets the inevitable opposition, and he is
expected to manipulate the locals at open-mike nights in the local bar and by
any other means available, including paying secret bribes to politicians and
organizing a county fair to show the locals the value of getting rich. (On that regard, the movie honors the first
episode of Donald Trump’s “The Apprentice” by showing a middle school girl
selling lemonade.) This is work –
manipulating people to sell them anything in a one-sided manner by creating
urgency and overcoming objections – that I personally am too introverted and
schizoid to do. Remember the mantra “Always
Be Closing” (and The 100 Mile Rule”).
Butler meets plenty of opposition, first from the thoughtful elderly school teacher Frank Yates (Hal Hollbrook), and then from a
slender, charismatic young man from an activist group called “Athena”, Dustin
Noble (John Krasinski). He also dates
another female teacher (Rosemarie
Dewitt).
Eventually, there are at least two clever plot twists, that
seem a bit contrived. Movies need to
have “endings”, but maybe the plot really does show the futility in working in
sales for someone else. This oil company really had all bases covered -- or did it? But my own
father sold "other people's goods" for forty years.
The film is based on a story by Dave Eggers, and the
screenplay was adapted and written by Damon and Krasinski.
Van Sant’s camera does dawdle a bit on male aesthetics at
times. In his world, men should be like
redbird male cardinals, noticed for beauty. Both Krasinski and Damon look to be in great
shape, rather like permanent teenagers themselves.
Here is Damon’s New York Times interview.
I saw this before a fair crowd at Landmark;s Bethesda Row in
Maryland. Right now it is playing in
only one theater in the DC area, though from a major company. Why?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment