The hot-button topic of fracking has finally made its way to Hollywood in the new movie Promised Land, with actors Matt Damon and John Krasinski teaming up to further the debate on the energy drilling technique.
The film explores the social impact of hydraulic fracturing drilling technique, or fracking which has sparked nation-wide environmental and political battles over its impact on drinking water, US energy use, seismic activity and other areas.
Promised Land sees Damon, 42, reuniting with director Gus Van Sant for the third time, following their success with 1997 film Good Will Hunting and 2002’s Gerry.
In their latest film, Damon plays a corporate salesman who goes to a rural US town to buy or lease land on behalf of a gas company looking to drill for oil. He soon faces opposition from a slick environmentalist, played by Krasinski.
In real life, Damon has not shied away from getting involved in political and social issues, working with charities and organisations to eradicate Aids in developing countries, bringing attention to atrocities in Sudan’s Darfur region, providing safe drinking water and stopping trees from being chopped and used for junk mail.
Yet Promised Land, which Damon also co-wrote and produced, does not take a noticeable stance on fracking. The actor would not publicly state his own views, saying that he did not think his opinion had “any bearing” on the film.
“The point is that the movie should start a conversation. It’s certainly not a pro-fracking movie, but we didn’t want to tell people what to think,” Damon said.
The actor said he and Krasinski never set out to make a socially conscious film, and fracking was added in later, as a backdrop to the story.
“It wasn’t that we said we wanted to make a movie about fracking as much as we wanted to make a movie about American identity, about real people. We wanted to make a movie about the country today, where we came from, where we are and where we are headed,” Damon said.
“Fracking was perfect because the stakes are so incredibly high and people are so divided. It asks all the questions about short-term thinking versus long-term thinking.”
Hydraulic fracturing entails pumping water laced with chemicals and sand at high pressure into shale rock formations to break them up and unleash hydrocarbons.
Critics worry that fracking fluids or hydrocarbons can still leak into water tables from wells, or above ground.