The serious movies, as opposed to the frivolous movies, have been out for a few months now.   If I want to bet on the Oscars, I need to get to a theater, right?

But the ex-urban mall, which opened on the county line and put the inner-ring suburban theaters out of business, has made it more difficult for us urban bicyclist to go to the movies.

We looked at the paper.

The Hobbit looks frankly horrendous, and anyway at age 11 I inscribed the end-paper of my paperback copy of The Hobbit  with the words A HOBBIT IS ROTTEN.

And I can’t imagine sitting for two and a half hours through Lincoln, with the brilliant Daniel Day-Lewis in a weird kind of Lincoln drag, though I’ve heard nothing but good about the film.

So what does it take to get me to a movie?

In this case it was a car, which raised my carbon footprint stats slightly.

We went to see Promised Land, starring Matt Damon, Frances McDormand, and John Krasinski.  Written by Matt Damon and John Krasinski, and based on a story by Dave Eggers, this simple but effective film, set in rural Pennsylvania, examines the environmental impact of “fracking,” or hydraulic fracturing, which is the process of drilling for natural gas by injecting water, sand, and chemicals into the ground.

And the movie has enough clout that one natural gas company, Marcellus Shale Coalition, is up in arms and has paid for a 15-second pro-fracking commercial to be shown before Promised Land in theaters in Pennsylvania.

Unprecedented, right?

So, yeah, we were there!

The premise of the story is simple:  Steve (Matt Damon) and Sue (Frances McDormand),  two soulless sales people for Global, a natural gas company, try to persuade the struggling poor farmers  of a small town in rural Pennsylvania to sell their land cheaply so the company can make millions off it.

Of course Steve and Sue are not soulless.  Steve, a bland young man from Eldridge, Iowa, thinks he knows inhabitants of small towns: his hometown died when the Caterpillar company closed, and he genuinely believes it is best for the farmers to sell and get out.  But we see him struggling to keep up to speed on environmental issues:  his research skills are nil, he depends on word of mouth, and is shocked to learn  that the articulate rabble rouser (Hal Holbrook) who has raised environmental questions at a town meeting is not “just a high school science teacher,”  but has a Ph.D. and was an engineer at Boeing.

Sue is  a down-to-earth woman with a wry wit and direct beyond-gender style  that works well in the small town, who talks to her kid by Skype and tries to keep Steve on track when his beliefs are shaken.

Both are complicating their lives with short affairs:  Steve is attracted to a teacher he meets in a bar and gets dead-drunk to impress her by playing a drinking game called “Absolute Madness.”   Sue  is attracted to the good-looking owner of the general store, and, without even being drunk,  sings a hymn at open-mike night at a bar, because he has suggested she should make a fool of herself to win friends.

Then the charming Dustin (John Krazinski), an environmentalist who has come to town to stop them, steps up to the mike after Sue’s performance and gives a speech about fracking.  Then he sings Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” and gets everybody dancing.  The people are suddenly on his side.

You can imagine how unhappy Sue and Steve are.

But details are important.  Although Dustin educates us about the fracking issue, he enters the town in a truck, which struck me as very odd.  An environmentalist in a truck?

Get a small car at the very least!

And this detail turns out to matter.

Dustin plants anti-Global signs around town depicting dead cows on a farm that was polluted by fracking.  The farmers begin to realize this is about more than money.  And Dustin also  teaches an elementary school class the horrors of fracking with a demonstration of what happens to a toy farm when chemicals, water, and sand are dumped from a plastic bag:  the farm goes up in flames.

And Steve is wondering what is really going on.  He vulnerably asks Sue if there is any truth to what Dustin says about fracking.  She says no, but obviously doesn’t know any more than Steve does.

Steve is the character who undergoes the biggest change.  He is horrified when a poor man who has signed the contract to sell his land shows up at the bar in a convertible he has just bought.

He is beginning to learn the havoc he wreaks.

Now I can’t give away the ending, but let’s just say there’s a twist.  Fracking is horrible, but people are…

Well…

Also horrible.

At one point Dustin says to Steve something along the lines of, “You would be good at what I do.”

And we do see that.

This is not a great film, but it’s a good one.

The acting is exceptional.

Every word McDormand utters is perfect for her character, and I would give her an Oscar for this, though that probably isn’t in the cards for this movie.  She is a salesperson/mom on the road, doing the best job she can and killing time until she can get home to her son, and she means it when she tells Steve,” It’s just a job.”  Her mobile lined face is expressive.

Matt Damon is always deadpan, and sometimes he comes across as quiet and thoughtful, but in this case he does a good job of being bland and not too bright.  His face frowns and squints as he tries to come to terms with what is what.  He believes in his job, and when he suddenly doesn’t believe, it shakes up his whole life.

As for John Krasinski, I’m amazed.  I’m used to his smirking on The Office, a show that bores me so much it always seems to last far, far longer than half an hour, and I didn’t expect this level of charm and vitality.  He plays a different character here!  So that means he can act?  Blimey!

Yes, he can.

Fracking isn’t an issue in my area of the country, but it is one we should all pay attention to.   According to an article in Common Dreams, ” New York and Maryland have suspended fracking, in order to assess its environmental and health impacts.”

Let’s suspend it in Pennsylvania, too!

Go for the wind power and solar power, guys.  That’s where the future is.