Gus Van Sant's "Promised Land'

Beware the Promised Land. Exile may be a better bet, or, in the case of Gus Van Sant's Promised Land, you may find the slow death of poverty preferable to the swift one of sudden riches.

The land, in this case, is thrice-raped Pennsylvania, which, having survived the nation's first oil boom and the long, destructive ravages of coal mining, is now getting the business again from the natural gas industry.

As everyone now knows, Pennsylvania sits astride a subterranean rock formation called the Marcellus Shale, which in turn holds a vast reservoir of natural gas. This treasure is accessed through a high-powered drilling process called hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, in which water treated with a lethal cocktail of chemicals is injected into the rock to break it up.

Well, what could possibly go wrong with that? Just about everything, from earthquakes to poisoned fields and aquifers to cancer, not to mention inflammable drinking water from your tap.

Battleground state

Two years ago, Josh Fox's award-winning Gasland documented the ecological devastation caused by fracking from Louisiana to Wyoming. On the other hand, natural gas is a potential trillion-dollar business that promises to make America independent of foreign energy sources until we've turned the planet into a sauna.

Pennsylvania is currently the battleground state for the laughably unequal contest between frackers and environmentalists, and Promised Land tells the story of one fictional community poised to lease its land for cash to a company called Global Crossing, a name that might be vaguely familiar to you as that of an actual telecommunications firm that went belly-up a decade or so ago.

Miller's Falls (or Miller Falls, as it is also called in one of the film's bloopers) is your typical idyllic yet depressed Pennsylvania farm town. Everybody's folksy (and white) in Miller's Falls, where the local entertainment is karaoke singing in the bar and high school basketball in the gym. Nobody really drinks to excess; and nobody, apparently, does drugs.

Evangelistic zeal

None of this idyllic scene-setting fools Global Crossing's ace leasing agent, Steve Butler (Matt Damon, the co-author of the film's script and, until scheduling conflicts intervened, its intended director). Steve comes from a hardscrabble Iowa town that went bust after the local Caterpillar plant closed, and he has an evangelist's zeal to enrich the residents of Miller's Falls. Subsistence agriculture won't cut it any more, he tells them, and welfare is running out.

Steve knows what fracking means, but that's not the discussion. The people of Miller's Falls and a thousand towns like it are the walking dead; their land is already useless to them. Their only question is whether they can get paid something for it.

Steve is assigned an older colleague, Sue (Frances McDormand, in a beautifully understated performance), presumably to assist him but in fact as a minder. His success— he cuts cost-effective deals and always gets his man— makes him a valuable asset; but what makes him good is that he believes in his product, which is salvation. The only trouble with this sales strategy is that Global is selling natural gas.

Pied Piper

Some local residents are only too eager to sign on, but others are skeptical. Steve slips up when he low-balls his bribe offer to the township supervisor (a rookie mistake; this is the one guy you want to overpay), and then runs into an elderly sharpster, Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), a retired geologist who challenges him at a town meeting.

The upshot is that the town decides to take a vote, which means that opposition can coalesce. This development violates the first rule of the leasing business: Divide and conquer.

If this isn't trouble enough, an engaging young environmentalist named Dustin (John Krasinski, who co-wrote the script with Damon) shows up. He's a remarkably effective Pied Piper, and though all he has is a truck, a smile and a seemingly inexhaustible supply of scary posters, he seems way beyond Steve's league.

Last-minute discovery

Steve doggedly pursues the townsfolk one at a time, winning some and losing some. His problem, though, is that Global operates as a locust; it must pick every field clean, leaving no pockets of resistance behind.

At the last minute, Steve discovers that he and Dustin are actually playing on the same team, and that Global has simply covered its point spread. This means that Steve himself has been played, and for a fool. He can take this experience as part of a learning curve, or he can take it personally.

There's a third option, too: He can consider whether the person in need of saving is someone other than himself.

You can probably figure how this is going to turn out, but that's not the issue. Hollywood doesn't have a hard time separating the good guys from the bad guys; it just can't find the gray middle and the stickier reality underneath.

Hardy pioneers?

Van Sant's camera makes rural Pennsylvania look like an unspoiled paradise (most of the film was shot around Allegheny County) instead of the already-despoiled land that much of it is; the Damon-Krasinski script makes its residents seem, for the most part, like hardy pioneers a little down on their luck (the high school team is even called the Pioneers).

For the real skinny, I recommend Philipp Meyer's American Rust, a recent novel set in the same region. The reality is that Pennsylvania's towns have rolled over to the gas interests; the game is already over.

The question— unasked by the film— is why this must be the game. Instead, there's a feel-good ending, with an eight-year-old girl selling lemonade and down-home American values. Somehow, in the U.S. economy of 2013, you doubt that's going to cut it.

Fear of the future

Only one scene in this Happy Valley fantasy lets in a glimpse of truth. Steve pays a call on Frank Yates, who lets down his codger's guard to admit that he, too, is scared of the future. The only thing that distinguishes him from his neighbors, he says, is that he is close enough to death to hope that he can shuffle off with his dignity intact.

Which also means— undermining the whole point of his character— that he can afford to do what they can't: turn down Global's offer. Après moi, le déluge.

Gas industry spokespersons have pointed out that Promised Land was partly financed by something called Image Nation Abu Dhabi; in other words, by one of the oil emirates, which might be supposed to have a passing interest in slowing the natural gas juggernaut in the U.S. The film was also heavily subsidized by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, to bring (you guessed it) badly needed money, jobs and scenic advertisement to a depressed area, even if only briefly.

All of which goes to show that Hollywood politics are a little more complicated than they might seem, and Hollywood financing even more so.