The song “American Honey” is about a woman aching for the free spirit she was in her youth, wishing she’d had the courage to flee her circumstances. Andrea Arnold’s American Honey considers what that woman’s life might have been had she left. The sensational Sasha Lane plays Star, a young woman who steps out of her life and into a tribe of disenfranchised, disenchanted, lost youth on an odyssey across the American South.
Star is struggling. She’s living with her boyfriend and raising his children, with no help or money. Then one day at Wal-Mart she watches a troop of wild teens turn the store into their own raucous dance party...
Star is enchanted by their ringleader Jake (Shia LaBeouf) who seduces her in a whirlwind of promises of freedom and money. Jake and his brethren traipse across the country, selling magazines door-to-door for Krystal (Riley Keough), a hard-edged party girl turned tycoon. The “mag crew” are an assortment of lost boys and girls who have absconded from their homes and families. They drink, smoke, and party their way across the South, hawking their wares and sad stories to anyone who’ll listen. These are the apathetic millennials we’re hearing so much about in this election cycle; young people who care more about getting laid and paid than meeting the expectations of “adult life.” But Arnold doesn’t judge them. She positions them as entrepreneurial journeymen, trying to channel their anxieties and caustic energies into something. They want proof they can be more than where they came from.
Star taps into a need to prove herself to the crew, but especially Jake, which manifests in her jumping into cars with strangers to pursue her sales. The particular brand of American paranoia descends over the film every time Star strikes up a conversation with men we’ve been trained to be suspicious of. When American Honey plays on this anxiety it’s reminiscent of another coming of age epic, Richard Linklater’s Boyhood. In that film, the threat of trauma similarly looms large over dramatic moments, because audiences are trained to anticipate disaster. But like Boyhood, no real disaster arrives. Instead the film steps out of Star’s way, boldly eschewing the concepts of plot and climax, and finds its rhythm in observing her behavior and choices.
Andrea Arnold brought back genius cinematographer Robbie Ryan after their work together on Wuthering Heights and Fish Tank. Ryan stays close to Lane (as he did with the brilliant Katie Jarvis in Fish Tank), capturing Star’s thoughtful, expressive face at her most confident and her most vulnerable. American Honey looks very different from their previous collaborations. Taking a cue from the title, the movie is saturated in mellow honey tones, and natural lighting spotlights Lane’s unadorned beauty.
Arnold enjoys exploring discomfort in her films; testing her characters with physically and emotionally uncomfortable situations. Her preference for untrained actors enhances the effect, eliciting unrehearsed, authentic reactions. During American Honey’s most sincere, sexy, and disturbing scenes, Ryan’s camera shies away from the central action, acknowledging the tension and allowing it privacy to unfold honestly. The camera often focuses on insects in quiet moments that serve as a reminder of the strength and resiliency of these overlooked creatures, and ask you to extend the same courtesy of perspective to the film’s lost children.
LaBeouf’s Jake is magnetic. He catches Star’s eye immediately and the viewer can sense what he represents to her: possibility, abandon, freedom. Jake’s Peter Pan charm recedes, revealing a manipulative and jealous nature. LaBeouf’s performance feels dangerous and unsettling; there is a seething anger within. Jake is the epitome of the angry, isolated young man who feels abandoned and betrayed by his country. And even he seems agitated by his behavior when his frustrations consume him. Jake is no match for Star whose admiration of his bravado gives way to suspicion when she recognizes the same violent masculinity and wounded ego she left in Oklahoma.
Sasha Lane is transcendent as Star, playing the role with a remarkable subtlety and grace. Star is introspective, happier observing, but passionate when it comes to questions of authenticity. She develops a quiet stillness as she journeys further from her past. For the first time in her life, she has a reason to look toward her future. Star has never known how to swim, and this weakness chains her to her former life. When the stirring chords of Raury’s “God’s Whisper” begin to play, the seductive force of the future overtakes her. And in that magical moment she wades into the water, washing away all her fears, anxieties and weaknesses, taking her first steps into a new life.
American Honey is an extraordinary achievement. Andrea Arnold’s vision of America is an elegy for freedom. Masterfully assembled from 100 hours of footage by Editor Joe Bini, this sprawling epic examines the socio-economic anxieties crippling middle America through a marginalized perspective. Andrea Arnold focuses her attention on these kids, not to judge their antics, but to celebrate their determination to live the lives they choose and not those prescribed to them at birth. In a time when superficial judgments about race, creed, gender, sexuality, and age are dividing the country into warring factions, American Honey is an important portrait of a lost generation, and essential viewing for a wounded nation.
Grade: A