PROMISED LAND by Gus van Sant

by Matt Micucci

 

In a world where newspapers are filled with stories about environmental disasters and technology constantly makes it easier for people to get together and oppose even the biggest of companies, a melodrama about fracking (extraction of gas via hydraulic fracturing) seems perfectly timed. However, the wait for a major work about the environmental issue will have to go one for a little longer, as Gus van Sant’s film quite frankly leaves much to be desired.

 

The story is simple. Steve Butler (Matt Damon) along with Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), is a natural-gas salesman, sent down to a small town in Pennsylvania to seal the deal and get its inhabitants to sign over drilling rights to their land. However, things don’t go as smoothly as planned after a local schoolteacher Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook) introduces his neighbours to the dangers of fracking and after a young environmental activist, Dustin Noble (John Krasinski) comes to town. Furthermore, what for Butler should have been an easy last job before his big promotion becomes a long stay which leads him to questioning not only his work but his lifestyle.

 

It’s rather tasteful of the film not to paint the characters as caricatures. The salesmen are not evil corporate suits; they are normal human beings, conflicted but even a little naïve, who see their task as just another job. It’s equally as impressive to see the way in which Steve’s vulnerabilities make him look likeable and fragile in comparison to Dustin’s self assured ways that make him come across as sinister and arrogant. In spite of all the ethical aspects implied, Van Sant hence leads us to side with the man who should naturally have been the villain in the story and invites us to understand him. However, the screenplay, written by its stars Damon and Krasinski, originally meant to mark Damon’s directorial debut, is far from perfect. Not only is it too conventionally structured, loosely following a Capraesque doctrine, but it also moves at too much of a slow pace and becomes too predictable. Yet, regardless of its simplistic nature, it still manages to stumble quite clumsily, most notably with an awkwardly placed and sometimes disregarded love interest involving a local woman who quickly becomes another background reason for the rivalry between Steve and Dustin.

 

The most touching moments usually involve Dustin Noble, whose opposition to fracking feels genuine and untouched political agendas. At some point in the film, he admits to Steve that he could do with the money but, unlike the mayor, he is not willing to sell his soul for it. In the end, it is Hal Hobrook’s honest interpretation of Dustin that gives the film its environmentally friendly message, and his words carry more weight that anything said in the final speech, which on the other hand looks like a preachy cliché.

 

The cast’s strong performances and a couple of nice shots of the American countryside cannot save this film from simply being too weak. By now we should all be used to Van Sant’s alternating filmmaking identities, which go from wildly experimental to conventionally saccharine. Nevertheless, Promised Land is destined to remain one of his most well meaning but forgettable works as it is neither inspiring or heart warming nor is it necessarily representational of any of his own alter egos.

 

Directed by - Gus Van Sant

Produced by - Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Chris Moore

Written by - John Krasinski, Matt Damon (based on a story by Dave Eggers)

Director of Photography - Linus Sandgren

Edited by - Buddy Rich

Starring - Matt Damon, John Krasinski, Frances McDormand

2012, USA/United Arab Emirates,