Although Gus Van Sant was able to shoot Promised Land right under our collective nose — and, if this story is to be believed, could get it out this year — not everything about it can be shrouded in darkness. We express a little surprise upon hearing that he, Matt Damon, and John Krasinski would make a drama about fracking, but the latter star has gone on the record to say that, while Promised Land uses the practice, it’s only one part of a much larger, far more human story. [Pittsburgh Post Gazette]

Specifically, “a backdrop” that gave them a chance to “magnify the country’s state”; as a whole, Promised Land is the story of a salesman (Damon) who, according to Krasinski, is “going through a change of his own and living in this current world and debating how he wanted to live in this current country.” Land‘s plot sees him and a land leaser (Frances McDormand) travel to McKinley, a fictional Midwestern town filled with both “experiences remind him of his own upbringing and background” and, unfortunately, denizens who don’t take kindly to their business proposal.

On the other side of the societal coin would, mainly, be Krasinki‘s environmentalist, along with two teachers: a retired one, played by Hal Holbrook, and Rosemarie DeWitt‘s currently-employed elementary school instructor. They act as Promised Land‘s backbone by, in the man’s own words, “protecting [...] a community and a lifestyle that they believe very, very strongly in”; when that’s all laid out, we can start to see pretty obvious connections to a central theme of “how citizens are scrambling to find and cling to their American pride.” Those Frank Capra comparisons might not have been so crazy.

Release-wise — something most reading this would like to know above all else — Van Sant has already created his “bare-bones assembly,” and is currently in an editing process which could, if all goes through as suggested, allow it to appear “possibly as early as the end of the year in a small number of theaters.” I wouldn’t be so crass and demanding as to say those responsible should hurry up and get it out now, so we don’t have to wait until, say, fall of 2013… though I couldn’t object to just such a thing happening, either.

Have Krasinski’s comments on Promised Land given a positive impression of the project?