Atmosphere in "Promised Land"

            Atmosphere has been one of Robert Johnston’s tougher movie concepts for me to absorb. This is what he says about it on p. 147 of Reel Spirituality:

            Atmosphere is the “unalterable given(s) against which the story is told and the characters developed…. It is the unchanging backdrop against which the story is played out…. It is that which is beyond the story’s ability to control.” It is something bigger than the characters, he says. He gives examples: the “existence of lost worlds” in “Jurassic Park” (1993); the” notion of ‘homecoming’” in “The Wizard of Oz” (1939); the “specter of anti-Semitism” in “Schindler’s List” (1993). I kept wishing he would use a different word. Did he mean context or setting, theme or worldview? I looked in the dictionary.

            Backdrop is a theater term. It came into usage in 1913 to describe the painted cloth that in those days hung across the rear of a stage. A synonym is background.

            Atmosphere has several meanings. Those that are useful in a movie discussion are: the air of a locality (if you take it in a metaphorical sense); a surrounding influence or environment (e.g., an atmosphere of mutual trust); the overall aesthetic effect of a work of art; a dominant aesthetic or emotional effect or appeal. Reading these definitions, I felt assured that Johnston had used the right word. Backdrop gave me a helpful visual clue.

So, here’s how atmosphere might be understood in the movie Paco and I watched over the weekend:

            First, the plot. “Promised Land” (2012) tells the story of Steve Butler and his partner Sue, who are employees of Global, a company that drills for natural gas. They go to a small farming community to convince residents that it is in their best interests to lease their land to Global. Global believes a rich deposit of natural gas lies beneath their stretch of countryside, which they plan to release with a process called fracking. Fracking involves blasting the shale that traps natural gas with pressurized chemicals. Global’s initiative raises an ethical dilemma for Steve: (1) Will the project be as profitable for the residents as he and Sue are promising it will? (2) Will the fracking process poison the land, not only ruining it for farming but rendering it uninhabitable?

            Second, atmosphere. The backdrop of the story is the attachment people have to a farm that has been in the family for generations. Steve understands this because he used to do chores on his grandfather’s farm in Iowa. He also knows what it’s like to live in a farming community that goes bust when it can no longer sustain itself. This is why he is, at first, a true believer for Global. In the end he goes back to his roots, emotionally speaking. In a town meeting, he tells the residents about his grandfather’s barn, which was the bane of his existence as a boy. To maintain it, they had to paint it every other summer. When he asked why, his grandfather said it was because “it is our barn.”

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