Documentaries are a tricky endeavour, especially in the era of Michael Moore where left leaning views dominate. When the subject is the environment, it gets even more perplexing since a stance on environmental issues is usually aligned with a certain political ideology.

GasLand curbs that trend. Directed by New York playwright/filmmaker Josh Fox, GasLand does away with politicizing (aka Republican bashing) and instead focuses on the consequences of the biggest industrialisation booms to hit the American west.

In short, this is a story of a blue state man speaking up for the plight of the red state people.  

Yet as a first person narrative, GasLand is as much a personal journey for Fox as it is an investigative procedural. The film begins with his receiving a letter from a natural gas company, who offer a substantial amount of money to drill on his family’s Pennsylvania estate, a lush piece of land complete with river bank.

Curious, he looks into what this could mean for his home, and comes across the ugly nature of natural gas extraction, especially the method of Hydraulic fraction (or “fracking”), where tons of water and sand mixed with numerous chemical accelerants are poured into a wellborn drilled into the earth, causing a mini earthquake and releasing gas.

From state to state, door to door, Fox interviews politicians, scientists, and above all the working class people who are affected by what they were assured to be a safe procedure. With heartbreaking clarity they speak of damage to their land, their livestock, and most alarming of all their health. Some can even light their contaminated drinking water on fire.   

Exercising restraint and poetic lyricism, Fox plays the guide/narrator as an engaging personality, but not one who hijacks the film from the bigger picture.

His finely tuned filmmaking chops are also on display, weaving the vast number of talking heads and testimonials with a creative visual style and some fine banjo playing. Information is bountiful, yet presented in informative, digestive gulps.

Put together, an illuminating and unsettling message is presented, that the systematic failure of our institutions has seen an unregulated and dangerous industry poison the water, the land, and the air which these people call home.

Yet it is not only in America. The natural gas boom has spread its fog cloud worldwide, going beyond an environment issue and firmly becoming an environmental disaster.

So the next time you are thirsty, ask yourself: what is in your drinking water?