Promised Land (2012)

A salesman for a natural gas company experiences life-changing events after arriving in a small town, where his corporation wants to tap into the available resources.

Director:

Gus Van Sant

Writers:

John Krasinski (screenplay), Matt Damon (screenplay)

Stars:

Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, John Krasinski

3 wins & 6 nominations.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
Matt Damon	...	Steve Butler
Benjamin Sheeler	...	Attendant
Terry Kinney	...	David Churchill
Carla Bianco	...	Waitress
Joe Coyle	...	Michael Downey
Hal Holbrook	...	Frank Yates
Dorothy Silver	...	Arlene
Frances McDormand	...	Sue Thomason
Titus Welliver	...	Rob
Lexi Cowan	...	Drew's Girl
Tim Guinee	...	Drew Scott
Sara Lindsey	...	Claire Allen
Frank Conforti	...	Coach
Garrett Ashbaugh	...	Basketball Player
Jericho Morgan	...	Jericho (as Jerico Morgan)

Storyline

Corporate salesman Steve Butler (Matt Damon) arrives in a rural town with his sales partner, Sue Thomason (McDormand). With the town having been hit hard by the economic decline of recent years, the two outsiders see the local citizens as likely to accept their company's offer, for drilling rights to their properties, as much-needed relief. What seems like an easy job for the duo becomes complicated by the objection of a respected schoolteacher (Holbrook) with support from a grassroots campaign led by another man (Krasinski) who counters Steve both personally and professionally.

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Plot Keywords:

propaganda | salesman | corporation | small town | natural gas | 

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Taglines:

What's your price?

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Genres:

Drama

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Motion Picture Rating (MPAA)

Rated R for language

Details

Official Sites:

Official Facebook Official site

Country:

USA United Arab Emirates

Language:

English

Release Date:

4 January 2013 (USA)

Also Known As:

Terra Prometida

Filming Locations:

Apollo, Pennsylvania, USA

Box Office

Budget:

$15,000,000 (estimated)

Opening Weekend USA:

$173,915, 28 December 2012, Limited Release

Gross USA:

$7,597,898, 24 January 2013

Company Credits

Production Co:

Focus Features, Participant Media, Imagenation Abu Dhabi FZ

Technical Specs

Sound Mix:

Dolby Digital Datasat

Color:

Color

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Trivia

The aerial shot shown during the credits is of Avonmore, PA.

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Goofs

The brochure and poster talk about how fracking by the company, "Global..." will 'effect' (noun) the community; the correct spelling/usage is 'affect' (verb).

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Quotes

Sue Thomason: I no longer sing in public.
Rob: What? I mean, what's the point of having good hair if you don't sing in public.

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Crazy Credits

Through most of the end credits, the camera zooms out to a wide shot of the town where the film takes place.

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Connections

Featured in The Tonight Show with Jay Leno: Episode #21.54 (2012)

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Soundtracks

Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
Written by Rodney Crowell
Performed by Emmylou Harris with Dolly Parton & Linda Ronstadt
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Records Inc.
By arrangement with Warner Music Group Film & TV Licensing

User Reviews

Much more than an environment film!

Its easy to see Promised Land just as the trailers promise.Namely as a film about the environmental hazards of drilling for natural gas using a process called fracking ( hydraulic fracturing), that is not as harmless as its made out to be, and placing this neatly in a decaying small town in the agricultural heartland of America. Promised Land works at that level too, but more importantly it is the study of its protagonist Steve Butler, played by Matt Damon.Matt Damon and his co writers John Krasinski and Dave Eggers, have written a role which is ostensibly a corporate salesman for big oil but could easily have been a Wall Street trader coming to terms with the troubling reality of the financial world.

Steve Butler is the study of a man seriously out of depth, he is doing a job that he thought he was good at, but suddenly his modus operandi seems childish and outdated.Matt Damon does not reveal his moral core throughout, he continues to wear the amour of his flannel shirts, that he buys to blend in, before he gets to the job of converting the townspeople to sell out their future.Perhaps he has risen to his level of incompetence, a classic example of the Peter Principle.But in the hands of Gus Van Sant its not just about professionalism.He befriends a charming single woman in a bar, in a town like this its a miracle she exists.He turns his charm on her just like he does with his audience. His favorite trick is walking upto the front yard of a house and asking the kid who may be playing there,"Are you the owner of this place?'When the confused kid says, "No", he asks,"Then how come you are doing all the hard work?".That's a slam dunk.

But Steve this time has competition, a man more handsome, more charming and apparently smarter arrives out of nowhere, with a bunch of damning photographs which graphically illustrate the nightmare that the residents are about to wreck on themselves.He not only steals the town but also the girl.How Steve will deal with this double whammy is the neat resolution of the film.The resolution exists because filmmaking is a costly enterprise, but as we learn through the course of this film, reality is far more complicated than that.

He has a partner, Sue, played by Frances McDormand, who is the perfect choice for this role.She is tough and business-like and we see her cringe more than once as Steve turns into a bigger and bigger wreck.She is a travelling hockey mom, her sons baseball game is her only silver lining.She manages to remain sane because of this emotional anchor which Steve does not have.The reality of the environment debate is complicated and it needs a scientist to decode, played here by Hal Holbrook, who is able to do a more comprehensive job of using Google to figure it all out.And yet as he and Steve concur,ultimately its all about our consumption pattern that we are not willing to discuss, let alone change.The sad eyes of Halbrook see no hope, only sparks of revolt, which he provides with his research to the residents.

We start off in Promised Land by looking at Jason Bourne and then forget all about him.Perhaps this is part of what Damon was aiming for, to become an actor again rather than a one man action movie franchise.He succeeds to a very large extent.Francis McDormand is surely an American national treasure and her performance here is reason enough to see this film.The cinematography is deliberately fuzzy but maybe the goal is to make a pretty landscape look ugly and grainy, photographing the lush landscape and its wonderful actors in sharp focus would have made it a pretty picture, detracting from its weary tone.

The oeuvre of Gus Van Sant is full of pieces that study the American landscape from an intimate leftwing lens.From Milk which looked at a gay rights activist to Elephant, which quietly observed the Columbine shootings with a docudrama approach, his films try to decode the American ethos. Along the way he makes brave choices like reshooting Psycho shot by shot, a decision for which he has been much vilified, but his reasons for doing so as a serious director were commendable.Cinema is better off with experiments like those, never mind if they fail, or don't make people happy.

Promised Land remarkably reminds one of Peter Bagdanovich's classic 1971 film The Last Picture Show in its study of the collapse of the American dream.That film perhaps sets the stage for this one, all the young people have gone away to the city and those that remain must make frightening life choices.Its easy to see the poverty struck town as a microcosm of America and the title as a commentary on the shattered "Great American Dream" (surprisingly not trademarked yet).Mr Van Sant delivers a richly textures film that neatly sidesteps the environment question and places individual choices at its centre.

Published on my blog mostlycinema.com