Story by Dave Eggers
Screenplay Written by John Krasinski and Matt Damon
Directed by Gus Van Sant
** (two stars)
In our social/economic/political landscape and structure, I really believe that we have collectively reached a tipping point. And frankly, I am wondering if anyone even gives a shit.
Forgive me for beginning this review in such a profane fashion. I do not mean to offend. But I have to say that as I look out across recent political events in our country, as well as in my home base of Madison, WI, during the last four to five years, so many rights, laws and issues that were and are solely designed to advance everyone in this nation forwards are all being strategically stripped away, piece by piece, without malice, and all in the grand pursuit and cultivation of ultimate power and gross avarice. Think about how the issues of gun control, our endless wars, women's health, climate change, class warfare, the destruction of unions and the subjugation of public workers and the sheer Orwellian ideology that the richest among all of us are the most disenfranchised have played out in recent years. I am truly amazed that hundreds of thousands of people are not taking to the streets demanding justice.
Yes, we have had our political uprising in Wisconsin against the ideological and inhumane practices taken by a certain Governor, who shall remain nameless so as to not taint my blogsite. Yes, we have had the Occupy Movement. And depending where you tend to obtain your news, social/economic/political skirmishes are still taking place. Even as I write, I am reeling from the United States Supreme Court's decision to cease the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and yet, that voluminous sense of outrage that I would expect to see, hear and feel throughout the nation is not readily apparent and I just do not understand why. Have we become too uninformed, too complicit, and/or too apathetic to really care about what is happening to all of us anymore, because it is happening to all of us. And the again, for all of the screaming and protesting that is occurring, it has been proven again and again that the speech of the people is no match for the "speech" of the corporations. When I need to be talked down from the ledge, I keep reminding myself of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's words about how the extreme length of the moral arc of the universe always bends towards justice. If that's true, then that moral arc desperately needs one gigantic, collective push!
Now, dear readers, I am not about to spend the fullness of this review with a political rant just for the sake of doing so. The reason I am beginning with this is because I feel that the tipping point of which I referenced is due to the fact that our social/economic/political landscape has long shifted from being merely about politics and has taken a swan dive into the ocean of morality. The issues at hand and how they are being played out in this country have ceased to be about "Right" and "Left." For me, we are at a stage where every moment and every political decision is about Right and Wrong.
Sometimes, I think that it is extremely helpful to look to stories, the art of storytelling and even the movies to explore the most complicated aspects of our collective existence because by being personally removed and experiencing the issues through characters can, at best, illuminate concepts that would appear to be terribly daunting to comprehend otherwise. Sometimes, a movie can miraculously capture a precise moment in time, the very moment that places a pinpoint upon the period where life in America and the world changed. In recent years, Director Jason Reitman's "Up In The Air" (2009) was that very film, as far as fictional narrative features are concerned, as that film perfectly encapsulated the emotional wreckage caused by the 2008 economic collapse, mass layoffs, financial anxiety and subsequent recession. In some ways, Director David Fincher's "The Social Network" (2010) also perfectly encapsulated the period where our virtual lives have threatened to overtake our real world relationships and interpersonal human connections.
Director Gus Van Sant's "Promised Land," written by actors John Krasinski (from television's "The Office") and Matt Damon, feels to be the very type of film that could also fit into this specialized category as the topic at hand is the controversial natural gas resource extraction technique known as "fracking" is utilized as a catalyst to examine and critique our country's current state of capitalism, where the corporate world's endless pursuit of money and financial dominance has continued at the expense of concern for our collective humanity and has outstripped all sense of morality. While the film does indeed begin very sharply and strongly, it unfortunately does not achieve the goals and a power that I would gather Van Sant, Krasinski and Damon had hoped for due to a muddled screenplay, a too tame tonality and a hazy directorial focus. A shame as this film could have been a knock out and possibly the very antidote needed to kick our higher sensibilities out of its slumber.
"Promised Land" stars Matt Damon as Steve Butler, a representative of the fictional Global Crosspower Solutions (GCS), who alongside his partner Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand), travel from one economically strained small town community to another to (cheaply) persuade land owners to sign mineral rights leases over that grant drilling rights over to GCS. As the film opens Steve and Sue have arrived in a small Pennsylvania town and farming community, where much pride exists over how farms have remained intact and have been passed down from one generation to the next. Hoping to continue their strong corporate track record and close their deals within a few scant days, Steve and Sue plot how to ingratiate themselves into the community and gain the public's trust to better accomplish their goals.
Steve talks a good game to the townspeople as he explains how he was born and raised into a community much like theirs and over time watched how it became decimated due to the closure of an assembly plant. Feeling that towns simply cannot be sustained solely through the farming industry, Steve ensures that he and GCS can offer a solution, presumably the only solution, that will prove to be supremely lucrative for everyone: the aforementioned fracking process. When he and Sue are not offering sales pitches by day, the twosome cultivate the image of not being empty corporate suits by slyly making their presence with the locals. Sue begins a flirtation with Rob (Titus Welliver), the owner of a convenience store that sells guns and guitars while Steve spends his nights in the town bar, playing drinking games and building his own flirtation with Alice (Rosemarie DeWitt), a schoolteacher.
The town grows convinced enough with Steve's sales pitch that it decided to put the matter up for a community vote which first finds strong resistance from Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), a high school Science teacher, and even greater obstacles from the sudden arrival of Dustin Noble (John Krasinski), an advocate from a grassroots environmental organization who warns the town to not buy into anything Steve and Sue are attempting to sell as GCS destroyed his family's farm due to their fracking techniques.
As Steve and Dustin battle each other over the town's supports and potential votes either for or against the presence of GCS, Steve gradually falls into an internal crisis of conscience, as the small town boy he was clashes with the "bottom line" driven corporate adult he has become.
For all of its wants and intents, Gus Van Sant's "Promised Land" is a noble failure. It is an extremely well meaning film with its heart (and as far as I am concerned) its politics in the right place. But, noble intents and having a political conscious are just not enough and unfortunately, what could have been an experience of artistic and political power ended up being a jumble. Much of the problems with "Promised Land" lay at the feet of Krasinski and Damon's screenplay, which grows more sketchy and scattershot the longer the film runs. "Promised Land" does begin quite strongly as the motivations of the main characters and the film's overall conflict are established quickly and cleanly and there are several sequences of political debate and corporate intrigue that do supply very well delivered sparks. Scenes where Steve has to act at his most persuasive as he extols the virtues and over all necessity of GCS's involvement in the town are all extremely well written and Damon performs them with his standard sense of commitment and skill. I especially enjoyed the school gymnasium verbal duel between Damon and Holbrook, as that sequence truly set up the film I was hoping "Promised Land" would build into. But the film begins to get itself bogged down in superfluous material, making "Promised Land" lose its momentum, focus and ultimately, its overall purpose.
While Van Sant, Krasinski and Damon all wisely decided to create a film that is built on characters and story allowing the politics to develop organically instead of as didactic polemics, the execution of that tactic is surprisingly weak especially considering how strong Damon and Van Sant collaborated on their Oscar winning "Good Will Hunting" (1997). A major problem is that scenes meander more than they should. Character driven situations like Sue long-distance parenting her child via laptop, and one bar scene after another including karaoke singing are obviously included for the means of development and adding a bit of flavor to flesh out the story but all of those scenes eventually add up to nothing. A major plot twist late in the film feels more shoe-horned in rather than being anything remotely revelatory. Krasinski, Damon, and to a greater extent Van Sant also make the grand error of having a skilled actress such as Rosemarie DeWitt on hand but inexcusably waste her talents as she has nothing to do but simply exist in the thankless and seriously underwritten (or heavily edited) role of "the girl." And more unintentionally comic, Krasinski and Damon's script make the grand error of having seemingly every character at every point in the film utter Damon's character's name of "Steve" ad nauseum, as if repeating the name "Steve" will ensure that the imaginary audience will absolutely never forget his name. It was a distraction that nearly reduced this serious film into a drinking game.
Speaking of Steve, it was also extremely surprising that in a film which is explicitly mirroring the dwindling morality of a nation with the dwindling morality of the central character, the internal crisis was handled so simplistically. By the overall nature of "Promised Land," Steve should be the most multi-layered character within the entire proceedings but as the film lurches onwards, the script has him do no more than wring his hands and say over and again that he "is not a bad guy." Is that all there is? Having the leading character in a potentially politically charged motion picture exude a clash of moral values that is no deeper than anything you saw in say..."Doc Hollywood" (1991)? Will Steve choose big city money or small town values? Yes, dear readers, that is what "Promised Land" boils down to and the effect is disappointingly shoulder shrugging and yawn inducing.
Look, I know that a movie cannot change the world or have all of the answers to our devastating problems and I certainly did not expect "Promised Land" to do anything of the sort. But, it could have been so much better. It could have been a film to get us thinking, one to get us to ponder situations and current events in a way that just listening to the news or reading the paper just cannot reach at times. But it didn't, and by the end, I just didn't care.
This is precisely the very feeling you do not want to leave your viewers with when desiring to make a film that will strike up a crucially needed call to action, to rise, to wake up and band together ensuring that the aforementioned moral arc doesn't swing in the opposite direction to a point where it is nearly impossible to right the wrongs again.
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