American Honey

“Do you have any dreams?”

Directed by Andrea Arnold, the 2016 film American Honey follows free-spirited teenager Star (Sasha Lane), the attractive Jake (Shia LaBeouf), and a slew of other teenagers as they make a living out of selling magazines from door to door, traveling across the vast country landscape, and young, party-hard love.

What should people talk about first when discussing American Honey? The cinematography, of which is filmed in a style with two black bars on either side of the screen? Or perhaps the performances, which are placed in a rather judging spot, given that we have to spend two hours and forty-three minutes with them? I’m honestly not sure myself, because, unlike plenty of other films, anime, and any other piece of media, American Honey is an incredibly elusive work to critique, much less fully review. Luckily, American Honey isn’t some slippery, slimy movie that tries its best to avoid criticism: it’s a film that does its best to exceed expectations, offering one of the most honest theater-going experiences I’ve witnessed in quite a long time.

Obviously, the film is nice to look at; beautiful to look at, even. I wasn’t even thinking of being as awed as I was by the visuals going in: with the picture being boxed around by countless black bars, I just thought it was going to be pseudo-unique, but not gorgeous… not this gorgeous. So, without going any further praising something so easily recognizable, I’ll simply say this: American Honey is a film you want to see on a projector, for more reasons than one.

As mentioned earlier, there is one specific piece in this puzzle of a film that has to be addressed, no matter how much you like (or dislike) it: the acting. American Honey is a whopping two hours and forty-three minutes long road-trip movie, and as with all works that fall under that category, good acting performances (and, furthermore, good characters) are essential. Providently, the acting is quite amazing, even when taking into account that some of the more minor characters/actors were picked up right off the street, lending an even bigger hand to the film’s overall authenticity.

However, the characters require a bit more digging into in order to fully determine whether they are well-rounded or not, especially in the case of Star… who also happens to be our main character. You see, in the beginning (especially the beginning) of the film, I wasn’t too sure about Star as a whole: she seemed to interrupt plenty of things, including situations where Jake- another main character- was about to make a magazine subscription deal, only to have Star do this not once, but plenty of other times. Although, as the film went on and on, I began to realize something: Star is not a flawed character, but, rather, a flawed person; a realistically awry human, something I can’t applaud American Honey more for. Rarely do we ever see such reality and humanity as we see in this sprawling film.

8.5/10- Honest and authentic, American Honey is one film that will be known for a voice generally unspoken of: a voice that is of none other than America’s very own youth.