Promised Land (2012)

 


PROMISED LAND                 B-                   

USA (107 mi)  2012  d:  Gus van Sant                          Official site

Gus van Sant helped make Ben Affleck and Matt Damon’s careers by directing them in their Academy Award winning first screenplay, GOOD WILL HUNTING (1997), coming to the rescue again at the last moment filling in for what was to be Matt Damon’s initial foray into directing, pulling out with just 5 weeks before shooting began, but van Sant admirably pulls off a respectable small-town picture set in the rural farm country of Western Pennsylvania.  While the film has a conventional structure of big city corporate honchos visiting small time farmers eager to buy up farmland leases in order to drill for natural gas, promising large sums of money, in some cases millions, to farmers whose land may already be leased due to the hard economic times.  Seemingly easy pickings, two corporate sales personnel are sent in from Global Solutions, a rising West coast star Steve Butler (Matt Damon) and his partner Sue Thomason (Frances McDormand).  Buying flannel shirts and a pick up truck to look the part, they set out to convince the town to accept the company’s offer of money in exchange for drilling rights.  This has all the makings of a David vs. Goliath scenario, especially when an aging town spokesperson, the plain speaking Hal Holbrook as Frank Yates, a local science teacher, suggests this offer could ruin their land and water supplies.  When Butler suggests those are just rumors supplied by their competitors, Yates counters that this is a dangerous and tricky business where accidents or catastrophes have been known to happen.  When he urges the town to put it to a vote, Butler has 3 weeks to convince a majority that hydraulic fracturing technology, which can drill deeper than previously expected, has led to major increases in natural gas reserves and may not only get them rich, but that it’s safe and may be their only option.

The subject is reminiscent of Laura Israel’s recent documentary WINDFALL (2010) about installing giant wind turbines in upstate New York, especially since the chosen area happens to be among New York’s poorest counties and represents financial incentives to the dramatically declining dairy farm business.  What’s curious is the cross-section of people in town, rural folks who all know and trust one another, who have natural suspicions of outsiders, but who like the sincere, folksy, look-them-in-the-eye approach of Butler.  His position is immediately undermined, however, by the arrival of co-writer John Krasinski as Dustin Noble, a hard corps conservationist representative who aims to win over the town, immediately out-applying the folksy charm at local watering holes, singing popular country ballads on open mike night, providing pictures all over town of dead cows in the wake of Global Solutions drilling.  Soon he has the citizens eating out of the palm of his hand, including a bright and attractive local schoolteacher Butler has his eye on, Rosemarie DeWitt as Alice.  What seemed like a simple proposition turns into a personal nightmare, as Noble is brash and intuitive, knowing everything ahead of time about Butler and Global Solutions, where he’s always one step in front of their efforts, leaving this expert corporate team to continually second guess themselves.  His swagger and confidence gone, as much of the town has turned against them, Butler is running out of options.  While he has a majority of the landholders signed under contracts, he doesn’t have a majority of the town’s eligible voters. 

What’s intriguing about the film is the audience tends to side with Matt Damon, even if he’s a corporate shark, because he’s just an Iowa farm boy himself whose town lost everything when the Caterpillar plant went belly up.  In his mind, he’s actually helping these people, offering what they need, but audiences also tend to be suspicious of $9 billion dollar corporations that rarely tell the whole truth.  It’s also easy to side with Noble’s counter arguments, as no one likes to see dead livestock, but his arrogance in continuing to show up the corporate superstar is infuriating.  Despite their high powered reputations, there’s little evidence of it on display, as instead this corporate duo seem like a beaten team, especially when they construct a country fair and carnival, complete with a Ferris wheel, pony rides and pig races, even a tractor pull, all the things local farmers and their families adore, but a downpour of rain puts an end to that dream, leaving them hopelessly outclassed by a smug amateur.  The picture of the rural locale is beautifully captured by Linus Sandgren, while the melancholic score by Danny Elfman is quietly in reserve, leaving a sad tinge to this picture, as there was never much of a fight.  The only face to face discussions take place at that initial town meeting, where the voice of Frank Yates becomes the conscious of the community, as he demonstrates a knowledgeable foresight in not jumping at the money.  But the overall picture is clouded somewhat by a mysterious plot twist that suggests the argument is not fully resolved, that it is still developing, and that each community will have to deal with a similar story.  What’s perhaps most surprising is how close this story resembles the predictable plot to THE MUSIC MAN (1962), where a swindling outsider comes to sell a bill of goods to the unsuspecting people of River City, Iowa, where the town’s goodness and moral righteousness, not to mention the attractiveness of the town librarian (Shirley Jones), makes him see the light, turning a con man into a productive citizen.  A similar state of enlightenment adds a touch of ambiguity to this picture as well, where the moral seems to be “It’s not nice to fool Mother Nature.” 70s Mother Nature *Chiffon* Margarine Commercial - YouTube (31 seconds).

Your Sister's Sister

YOUR SISTER’S SISTER          C+              

USA  (90 mi)  2011  d:  Lynn Shelton 

Think of this as a Mumblecore version of ON GOLDEN POND (1981), where younger twenty-somethings seek out the remote tranquility of the Pacific Northwest region to work out their personal issues, while the most prominent feature of the film is the exquisite use of locations in Seattle’s Puget Sound region, especially the isolation of the nearby islands which is beautifully photographed by Benjamin Kasulke.  Shot very quickly over the course of 12 days, the film is extremely well directed, as the carefully composed shots couldn’t be more intimate, where the changing focus between the three main characters is kept in fluid motion, where the camera is always at the center of attention.  The film is almost completely improvised, where what one hopes for is a certain artistic freshness, a feeling of naturalness and authenticity, which to its credit is certainly there, but the downside is the characters continue to talk in circular motion, continually repeating the same themes, never really getting under the surface of any of the characters.  Often it’s painful to listen to the characters struggle for some semblance of having something important to say, where more often than not they never really find it.  Unlike the Mike Leigh improvisational method, this story does not evolve out of rehearsals, where characters are already comfortable in their skin, instead all remain skittishly uncomfortable, where the main storyline is imposed upon them rather than developed from them.  In this case, it makes all the difference in the world, as the basic outline of the overall narrative structure remains in place, where the characters simply attempt to navigate their way through the emotional issues. 

Mark Duplass from Safety Not Guaranteed (2012) and Shelton’s earlier HUMPDAY (2009) is Jack, the perennial unemployed drifter who remains dissatisfied with the emptiness and moral vacuum of whatever hand he’s dealt, yet who finds others equally as pathetic, even as they tout their successes.  Emily Blunt is Iris, his best friend, never better than in Pawel Pawlikowski’s MY SUMMER OF LOVE (2004), but her European accent and manner feel woefully out of place here, where she ruins the chemistry in nearly every scene, often in the way she uncomfortably needs to be the center of attention, where she obviously needs to work out her own issues, as she couldn’t be more of a sourpuss, draining whatever life or energy is in the air.  Rosemarie DeWitt, from Jonathan Demme’s RACHEL GETTING MARRIED (2008), is the revelation as Iris’s sister Hannah, a last minute fill-in for Rachel Weisz who was forced to drop out due to scheduling delays and ends up being the most appealingly honest of the three characters.  The story begins with an all too familiar example of theater of discomfort, where a small gathering meets to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the death of Jack’s brother, where after the typical laudatory words, Jack’s had enough and sets the record straight, sending a chilling silence through the room.  Iris thinks the best thing he needs is some space to clear his head and recommends her family’s lakeside cabin on a nearby island, just a bike ride and ferry boat crossing away.  The idyllic, heavily forested island location couldn’t be more picture perfect, including the glass widows overlooking the lake, where the musical score by Vince Smith elegantly underscores the captivating beauty, but Jack’s arrival in the middle of the night is more than a little awkward, as someone’s already there.  It turns out to be Hannah, where both appear to be more pissed off than annoyed at the unexpected arrival of someone else, as each seemed to be looking forward to a little soul searching in the solitude of the moment.

Nonetheless, Hannah’s outspoken nature is immediately appealing, where she’s made some major, life-altering decisions of late, yet she doesn’t wallow in her misfortunes and whine and bitch, like Iris, instead she brings out a bottle of tequila and starts downing shots.  She and Jack are instant chemistry, where alcohol and inappropriate sex make perfect sense to these characters, only to regret it in the morning when Emily arrives.  While Jack is for hiding the obvious, Hannah is not so sure, as keeping secrets from sisters is usually not advisable.  The different accents between sisters needs to be narratively explained, as Blunt’s British accent as well as her overly needy, self-centeredness takes some getting used to, as her presence instantly changes the dynamic for the worse.  The refreshing openness of the first night spontaneity is immediately evaporated, replaced by Iris’s indulgent inclination to dramatically overact, showing no sense of humor whatsoever, taking herself so seriously, altering the previously understated, often comical balance.  By the time she finds out what happened, she mopes around in an extended pout, feeling sorry for herself, basically unable to speak, perhaps most upset that she was actually upstaged by her older sister.  Despite the casting imbalance issue and the improvisational meandering, the fluid pace never wavers, even as the characters occasionally flounder in their self-imposed misery.  The ultimate irony in these misery-loves-company movies is the stunning absence of work, where these characters have all the time in the world to live in such an idyllic natural paradise, and then have the nerve to grumble and moan about their lives, usually starting with each other.  The structure of the filming couldn’t be more solid, as each sequence progresses naturally into the next, weaving in and out of each others pitiful lives, where the stillness of the gorgeous landscape stands in stark contrast to the muddled lives of small-minded humans.