As the first widely-released feature film to dramatize the natural gas boom in small-town America, Promised Land is one of the most interesting and relevant films to be released in the past year. Co-written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski and directed by Good Will Hunting’s Gus Van Sant, the film is superficially a well-acted drama with an environmentalist agenda. However, to portray Promised Land this simply would do it a disservice, since it attempts to transcend mere propaganda. Despite its only partial success at the box office, Promised Land raises important issues about the benefits and drawbacks of oil and natural gas development in rural America.
An Uninformed Depiction of Rural America
Promised Land takes place in a small town in rural Pennsylvania, where Steve Butler (Damon) works as a “landman” for Global Crosspower Solutions, a large natural gas company. Butler’s job is simple: to convince area landowners to lease their mineral rights to Global so that natural gas can be extracted from shale formations deep underground using a controversial process known as hydraulic fracturing, or “fracking.”
At the start of the movie, Butler arrives in the unnamed town to convince citizens to sign over their mineral rights to Global. He is joined by the cynical Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), a fellow employee of Global who works with him to secure the mineral contracts. Butler is very successful at his job, using his own rural upbringing to integrate himself into the town and forge common bonds with landowners.
As a small town resident, I took issue with the film’s one-dimensional depiction of the residents, many of whom are depicted as simple, flannel-clad country bumpkins, in order to frame the conflict as one between innocent landowners and a greedy corporation. Almost every resident, with the exception of an elderly schoolteacher with a degree from MIT, is either too naïve and uninformed or too proud to deal intelligently with Butler and Thomason.
In order to drive the story home, the writers conveniently forgot that in 21st century America almost everyone, regardless of residence, has access to newspapers, television, or the Internet. In reality, landowners know perfectly well why “landmen” are interested in their property, and landowners would not be so easily swayed by eloquent speeches and vague promises. The writers’ decision to portray the townspeople this way was meant to be noble, but the end result is shallow and reeks of urban condescension, turning these potentially likeable characters into caricatures of the inhabitants of rural America.
The major twist in the movie comes at the arrival of Dustin Noble (Krasinski), an environmental activist working for a small organization called Athena. Noble is one of the more likeable and nuanced characters in the movie, and his mission is to convince the townspeople not to approve Global’s mineral leases by teaching them about the grievous environmental damage caused by fracking. He initially appears to have the best of intentions as he sets out to protect the townspeople from experiencing the harm that befell his own family due to fracking.
Noble arrives just as Butler is in the midst of getting the bulk of his leases signed, and Damon’s character is understandably furious at Noble for interfering with his own efforts to “save” the town. To Butler, his job is a crusade to save small-town America from the decay that is the result of diminishing economic opportunities offered by small family farms. By interfering with that mission, Noble is preventing Butler from leading the town into the “promised land.” Nevertheless, Butler’s reactions seem over-the-top and out of character throughout the course of the movie.
A Hard-to-Believe Plot Twist
Noble is so effective at undermining Butler’s efforts that Krasinski’s character all but defeats Global’s chances at leasing the town’s mineral rights. Butler is ready to give up when he receives a package from Global that reveals that the bulk of Noble’s evidence was fabricated. This completely discredits Noble, and once again, the townspeople change their minds and decide to sign their contracts with Global.
Butler has one last conversation with Noble before he leaves town, and it is here that we discover the lengths the greedy gas company is willing to go to secure their leases. Noble reveals that he is an employee of Global seeking to undermine the credibility of environmental groups by using false information and lies. This is supposed to incite shock and outrage towards Global Crosspower Solutions, but the whole thing feels more like a cheap shot at energy companies; it is much too far-fetched—even for real life.
After exposing Noble’s lies, Butler is on the verge of securing the town’s final vote on the mineral leases when he starts to have second thoughts about fracking and the rightness of his cause. He ultimately decides to warn the town against signing the leases with Global to protect their farms and way of life. Though this is an entirely predictable development, what did surprise me was how little I cared, particularly because Butler’s change of heart at the end of the film is never really made clear beyond some vague second-thoughts about the possibility that fracking might harm the area’s environmental resources. Indeed, throughout the movie, the environmental argument against fracking is never fully developed.
In the end, Butler loses his job, and it is implied that the townspeople voted against allowing Global to drill on their property. For anyone familiar with a situation like this one, however, it is not an entirely feel good moment. The loss of the natural gas money means that the town and its surrounding farms will continue their slow decay.
An Unsatisfying Ending
Acknowledging uncertainty is ultimately what sets Promised Land apart from other agenda films. It was commendable for the writers to include some of hydraulic fracturing’s benefits because the issues surrounding it are not as simple as many environmental groups would like to think. No scientific study has conclusively proven that fracking adversely harms the environment or seeps into groundwater, which is why Promised Land tries so hard to portray the natural gas company, not fracking, as the villain. In the end, Promised Land is a confused film because everything from its agenda to its characters and setting is never fully developed properly.
Fracking is not perfect. In addition to its questionable effects on the environment, areas with heavy oil and gas development experience a variety of other issues, such as housing shortages, increased crime, infrastructure overload, and rapid population growth. However, the huge influx of economic activity also has its benefits, creating new roads, schools, hospitals, parks, and infrastructure. Many places, such as western North Dakota, where I live, have experienced an economic rebirth that created new industries and thousands of jobs.
Promised Land is a missed opportunity. The filmmakers chose to focus on fracking itself, which is a losing proposition in my opinion because new oil and gas drilling is going to happen whether they like it or not. Instead, they might have more effectively focused on the social and economic problems of oil and gas development in rural America, which are much more important and relevant to people all over the United States during this burgeoning energy revolution.