Promised Land

Similar to Django Unchained inasmuch as it doesn't hold anything back, Gus Van Sant's Promised Land provides a polemical analysis of fracking (shale gas exploration), giving ample fictionalized room for proponents and critics to have their say.

Set in a struggling small town, attendantly polarizing economic privilege and historical continuity, differing relationships with land, identity, community, the film persuasively establishes prominent competing practical ideological personalities, each competently nuancing myriad aspects of the debate.

It frankly and freely conceptualizes choice and accentuates the risks associated with maintaining principled stances in opposition to enormous reserves of capital.

And allows each individual viewer to determine their own verdict.

I like taking risks.

I'll go to a casino once a year willing to part with $200 dollars. If I lose it in twenty minutes it's quite difficult to stop playing.

But I do.

I'll try new cheeses, beers, tartares, films, expressions, novels, sauces, ideas, try and predict the outcome of playoff games . . .

But water supplies are not something I like to take risks with. They are critical features of communal environmental well being.

Profits generated from fracking do enable the construction of schools etc. while decreasing a nation's dependency on natural gas imports.

But the likely resultant carcinogenic contaminations will increase medical dependencies as well, thereby placing a further strain on the public purse.

You could get lucky and the procedure may not result in any harmful environmental side effects.

If you don't, you're completely screwed for generations.

The decision seems clear to me.