The Movie Promised Land recently showed on DSTV. In Promised Land, Matt Damon plays an aw-shucks nice guy who wants to be the caring face of capitalism. He has come to rural Pennsylvania with his pragmatic colleague (Frances McDormand) to persuade the town of McKinley to lease their land to a natural gas corporation. The economics of it are pretty brutal. Towns like this one are dying, unable to survive on agriculture, and some of the locals embrace the offer with enthusiasm. Selling up could make them millionaires. But thats before they understand about hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, which extracts the gas by a high-speed drilling of water and chemicals. The consequences can be dire: your livestock poisoned, your kitchen taps spouting flames. The fracking controversy is a political hot potato, Gus Van Sant, working from a script by Damon and John Krasinski, tries to humanise the debate, and he has such good performers that for a while it works. Perhaps a movie worth seeing for all of us. Those seeking an informed consideration of fracking should seek out Josh Foxs 2010 documentary Gasland. See the trailer at https://youtube/watch?v=dZe1AeH0Qz8
Posted on: Thu, 23 Oct 2014 07:56:17 +0000
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