Even
with its plot twist, Matt Damon’s “Promised Land” is more of the same
Hollywood anti-fracking propaganda we’ve seen before. And it isn’t even
great propaganda. It made only a little more than $4 million [1]
its opening weekend, putting it at number ten in the weekend totals,
right behind “The Guilt Trip,” according to Box Office Mojo.
Ironically, Matt Damon doesn’t think he made a biased movie [2]
and claims to have just wanted to start a conversation on the subject.
At least, that’s what he told The Morning Call, a Lehigh Valley, Pa.
newspaper. “Nobody wants to go see a movie where they get a message at
the end. That really wasn't our intent. It was just to show this moment
in time in our country, and what happens when big money collides with
real people, people who are struggling on the back end of a recession.”
Damon knows what “real money” is, after all he’s worth $65 million
according to Celebrity Net Worth [3].
While
he’s right that hydraulic fracturing is a big issue at this moment in
time, the message his movie sends over and over again is that big energy
companies, natural gas in this instance, will say and do whatever is
necessary to drilling rights through deception and downright lies.
It
portrays the companies staff preying on farmers because they are poor
and bribing officials. In contrast, the local opponent of fracking,
Frank Yates, is shown as an amiable, wise and well-educated man who
teaches science for fun and raised miniature horses. Farmers, at least
those wanting to lease their property for drilling, were shown as yokels
and suckers.
In
the film, Damon plays Steve Butler, a pitch man from Global Crosspower
Solutions, who heads into a rural (presumably Pennsylvania) community
with his partner Sue Thomason, played by Frances McDormand. As soon as
they arrive they are shown buying flannel shirts and other clothes “to
blend in.” Deception. Later, Butler is shown to have lied to a
politician he paid off about how much the gas underground is worth.
Lies. He is also called “an asshole” at least three different times in
the movie.
At
a town meeting, Yates tells everyone to “google the word [fracking]”
and calls it a “dirty business,” with the “potential for error too
high.” Much later in the film, he tells Steve “You came here offering us
money trying to help us. All we had to do is scorch the earth beneath
our feet.”
In
one of the most powerful scenes of the film, Krasinski, playing an
environmentalist Dustin Noble, goes into a classroom to show kids how he
claims fracking destroyed his family’s farm. He has model of a farm,
and mixes chemicals in a bag and then proceeds to pour the chemicals all
over the model. Then he lights it on fire, showing what fracking would
could do to the farms the children live on. The oversimplified
demonstration reinforces the oft-repeated myth that fracking makes water
flammable, as Josh Fox implied strongly in his anti-fracking
documentary “GasLand.”
Of
course the real life facts about hydraulic fracturing are rarely
mentioned. They do call natural gas a cleaner energy source, but
horizontal drilling and the fracking process get slimed. Nowhere does
the film acknowledge claims of water contamination in Dimock, Pa., has
been investigated and the EPA says the water is uncontaminated. Or that
some anti-fracking activists have been outed as frauds [4] -- such as the video of the flaming house water pipe from Wolf Eagle Environmental Engineers in Texas.
Investigative journalist Phelim McAleer has his own movie about fracking that will be aired on AXS TV [5]
channel on Jan. 22. In September 2012, McAleer said that the script for
“Promised Land” was being modified in light of misrepresentation on the
part of anti-fracking activists. Now that “Promised Land” is in
theaters the plot twist that may have been an attempt to reconcile the
movie and reality is apparent.
Noble,
the environmentalist character who persuades many to vote against
fracking on his personal word that “the land just died,” turns out to be
a fraud -- secretly employed by the same company as Butler: Global
Crosspower Solutions. So in the end, the natural gas company was behind
ALL of it, including the fake environmentalist so that once he was
outed, the town would vote to allow fracking.
“Companies like Global don’t need anyone. They play both sides,” Noble tells Butler.
Even that conspiracy isn’t helping the film win over reviewers, even left-wing ones. Variety.com called the movie [6]
“dramatically underpowered” and stated that the plot “cheapens the
seriousness of the issues at stake.” Editor and journalist Holman
Jenkins reviewed the film for The Wall Street Journal on Dec. 12 saying,
“Filmmakers
may be ideological numbskulls, but their real problem is often that
they are cowards, too afraid of their friends to make an interesting
movie.” [7]
[7]
Not even the Huffington Post is in love with Damon’s movie. On Jan. 4, author Raymond Learsy published a blog [8]
critical of “Promised Land” saying it was “meant to frighten Americans,
and whomever, to resist the development of shale gas in their
communities.” He even noted what was missing from the movie. “No mention
here of long suffering communities of Pennsylvania who have celebrated
an economic renaissance,” he wrote.
A few have tried to promote the film, including one reporter who wondered if this movie would have any effect on the Texas legislature’s decisions [9] on the issue. Rolling Stone magazine gave the movie three stars [10] and called it a “potent and powerful look at how the stressed economy is stressing farm communities.”
