Gasland, a documentary about the effects of natural gas mining in rural America, and Winter's Bone, a sort of film noir set in the backwoods Ozarks, present two diversions from the usual portrayal. Gasland does its damnedest to show its subjects as JUST ORDINARY PEOPLE and fails pretty miserably, but Winter's Bone, in being willing to show the actual ugliness of those people were know crouch in rural lands, but don't like to think about, humanizes them incredibly well.
To be fair, I think people should watch Gasland. I have trouble believing the full extent of the film's thesis that natural gas drilling is probably about to kill America, but the truth is probably far closer to that end of the spectrum than the gas company's bordering on parody advertisements implying that natural gas is SO FUCKING GOOD LOOK AT THE JOBS AND HELPING ENVIRONMENT. Having the family home on the Fayetteville Shale means we've been assaulted by print and television ads by Chesapeake Energy for years, and it's pretty depressing how most neighbors literally had no trouble believing that gas drilling would have no ramifications. I'd be lying if I wasn't amused by the fact that the same racist WHITE MAN IS THE SMARTEST GENETIC KING subsection of people are basically modern Indians staring gap-mouthed at shiny baubles courtesy of our energy kings.
While I enjoyed the message of Gasland, especially since it's so far the only film actually looking at what's a fairly important environmental problem (while at the same time we're probably at our twentieth documentary about Wal-Mart good job there you stupid fucks), there are some significant problems, and they can all be traced to this guy:
Of course, there's nothing really wrong with that. I'm smart enough to know that documentaries manipulate the audience's emotion through subtle background changes as much as any film. What is the problem is that this discrepancy is merely the start of Josh Fox doing his fucking best to convince us that he has some sort of connection to the rural instead of being some PoMo, Franzen reading dickurbanite. Josh, on the behalf of someone who has lived in rural Arkansas for almost all of his life, let me state that while you may fool your fellow cityfolk, you are not fooling anyone who regularly passes by overgrown yards with five or more broken down cars in front. In addition to being at one with the Earth and guys unironically wearing cowboy hats, he also does a fair share of wacky documentary filmmaking shots designed to tickle critics' bellies. You could probably have a drinking game/suicide pact based on taking a shot every time Fox shows some scene of environmental devastation mixed in with some calming, incongruous music track.
What bothered me more about the film is that general lack of interest in studying the science of things, and more in sensationalizing the problem. Literally the first two-third of the film are just Fox traveling to different people's houses, where they show him wellwater that is killing livestock or tap water that can be set on fire. It's striking stuff, but it goes on far longer than it needs to and doesn't really explain the at-large problems of gas drilling. And while this is the first large-scale film about the problem, it's not like there haven't been studies done about gas drilling, but the interviews Fox has with professionals rarely seem to disseminate any useful information. I guess we didn't really need you to continue that interview with the college scientist from San Antonio about how emissions from natural gas are worse than automobile emissions in the same area, Mr. Fox. I understand things had to be cut so you could show a scene where you play a banjo in front of a holding tank while wearing a gas mask. Priorities.
The movie really hits bottom when he tries to deal with people aligned with the gas interests. He's literally ignored by the actual companies. In one interview, the person eventually shrugs and leaves when Fox tries to push his luck and get to the tough questions. When he actually does get to spar with someone (the head of some western state's environment agency), Fox seems utterly blindsided by the interviewee's doublespeak. Every question leaves giant holes that the politician gleefully flies through. Eventually, in a pretty facile attempt to imitate Moore, Fox holds out a bottle of contaminated well water and goes WILL YOU DRINK THIS THE GAS COMPANIES SAID IT WAS SAFE TO DRINK, to which the interviewee metaphorically pats Fox on the head and sends him back to his seat. Shortly after this the movie ends with some New York state politicians asking genuinely tough and difficult questions to gas interests, which makes me wonder if Fox actually thought his own interview went well enough that he could compare it to the ending.
Let me repeat: you should watch Gasland. Even if you already know that fracking is a dangerous game, it's still worth watching just to see the interplay between the hipster and the rural man. The rural people featured plainly recognize Fox's origins, and play the same game with him as any group of economically challenged people do when dealing with a wealthy or influential stranger who believe that he/she is the only one that's able to help them. That's not to imply that any of the people in the film are exactly lying about their problems, but as someone who's spent alot of time in legal aid work, the worst attitude to give to disadvantaged people, and the one John Fox portrays, is the guileless "I'm helping these simple people because no one else can save them from their plight." It insults them in the presupposition that they're helpless, and there is no group more manipulative than those you presume to be powerless. You can almost hear the snickering when mystery families call Fox on his walkie talkies for super sekrit midnight meetings. Fox portrays his subjects as just good country people, and in reducing them to two-dimensional martyrs, ironically damages the power of his film.
Compare this to Winter's Bone, which is essentially Ozark Noir. Winter's Bone tells the story of a 17-year-old girl who is in charge of two younger siblings, a helplessly addled mother, and a living situation rapidly turning towards destitute. The girl finds that her father has skipped on his bail for meth production, and that what was used to pay off the bail was the family's property. What follows, like any other good noir, is a gradual journey of partial, though not total, discovery and an assorted cast of disreputable characters.
Like most of my positive reviews, it's hard to say much stuff about it, especially as it has been reviewed on the same positive points by much better critics. There were some negative reviews on rottentomatoes, largely focused on the dual tones that it was somehow exploitative against poor rural people (I'm assuming these are the same people that got huge boners for when Fox went to shots of some rancher staring into the distance of his sad natural gas habitat), and that it was just grim for grimness's sake. This is kind of a surprising accusation, since considering the subject matter, the movie is actually fairly restrained in how it handles the various aspects of backwoods ugliness.
If I have any real problems with the movie, it's that the movie slightly bungles the method to which it handles the increasing revelations. Without spoiling anything, the second half of the movies features just one too many scenes where the heroine learns things by people just visiting her and showing her what's going on. While noirs are supposed to have an aspect of events being beyond the protagonist's controls, it's a little off-putting when the reveals are literally just a series of facts placed in our lap. Granted, the heroine investigated in the first half in the movie, and there's a decent explanation for the change of tone, but it's still slightly annoying. To spoil from The Third Man, it would be as if the hero just spent the second half of the film sitting at a police station and at the end was told "oh hey we found Cotton in a sewer and shot him you can go now" CREDITS.
But don't let my stupid complaint stop you. Winter's Bone is seriously fucking excellent, and as noted above, really seems to understand the mindset of its subjects and the desolately beautiful setting that everyone is trapped in. I tried watching The Road with my mom a few days later, and just gave up halfway through to catch the last movie in Lifetime's Perfect Sunday Marathon (a literal series of movies about crazy clingy bitches going after perfect males) as all the ridiculous overt emotional manipulation that that film attempted was just worsened by remembering how genuinely affected I was by the end of Winter's Bone, and how that movie didn't have to show people crying or STARIN' HARD every five minutes to remind me I'm a human being.
(seriously, I'm not going to review The Road because I couldn't finish it, but I'm not sure if I hated it because I didn't like the book but I thought I didn't like the book because of the stupid writing style not the subject matter but now I just don't know because the biggest emotion I felt during the film was worry that this was directed by the Coen Brothers but whew it was just a crappy rip-off of their style)
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