American Honey (2016): Nothing’s Sweeter than Summertime
By Nick Sansone
When thinking back to the summers of my childhood, one feeling that always strikes me is that of being free. Free from school and homework and responsibilities, free from the layers of clothing I had worn for the last eight months, and free to get out of my small Indiana town and go on new, exciting adventures. Many of the summers of my childhood were spent in my mother’s car driving to visit relatives in Arkansas and upstate New York while listening to pop songs on the radio and staring out the window at the small towns we would travel through. And now whenever I drive on country roads, I’m taken back to those moments in my childhood and get that same sense of freedom, albeit with a more adult lens.
I was also taken back to those moments of my childhood when watching the traveling magazine sales crew at the heart of Andrea Arnold’s film American Honey (2016), which received a limited theatrical release in the fall of 2016 and is currently streaming on Netflix. Following the very loosest of plots and maintaining a dreamlike meandering pace for the entirety of its almost 163-minute running time, American Honey (2016) is nevertheless an immersive, mesmerizing experience, one that puts you squarely in its world and leaves you feeling dazed, maybe a little startled, but ultimately feeling more empathy for most everyone you come across on a daily basis. It’s a truly special film, and one of the most underrated gems of the 2010s.
The focal point of American Honey (2016)—as well as its heart and soul—is a mixed-race teenage girl named Star (Sasha Lane in her film debut), who at the film’s beginning, is living an impoverished life in Oklahoma, dumpster diving and hitchhiking with her stepmother’s two young kids and enduring sexual abuse at the hands of her alcoholic father. One day, while at the local Kmart, she encounters a young man named Jake (Shia LaBeouf), who is with a group of young adults traveling together as part of a magazine sales crew. Seemingly entranced by Star, Jake invites her to travel with them to Kansas City and become a part of the crew. While Star initially declines, she eventually decides that this is likely the only escape she’ll get from her current miserable existence, and she joins them the next morning.
From there, American Honey (2016) throws any traditional plot or three-act structure out the window and simply observes Star’s experiences with this crew. Jake is immediately tasked with training Star in the art of selling magazine subscriptions, and, perhaps inevitably, something of a romance starts between the two. This draws the ire of the leader of the crew, Krystal (Riley Keough), who sees any serious romance between crew members as a distraction from making money. Krystal’s objections aside, Star and Jake’s romance is short-lived. Irritated by Jake’s cockiness and lying to gain sympathy from potential buyers, Star vows to do her business honestly, even if it means hopping into a car with three old white men in cowboy hats or talking her way into a trucker’s semi to gain their trust and respect. All along, Star learns to respect herself and those around her, to see the beauty in her environment even when it might not seem fully there, and to let loose in song, in dance, and ultimately, in the freedom of the open road.
When describing what this film is “about,” it is easy to see how it would not work. Few people would hear about a film centered around young people selling magazine subscriptions door-to-door that runs for two hours and forty-three minutes and be inspired to cue it up on Netflix, let alone see it in a theater. But what writer/director Andrea Arnold accomplishes with this film is nothing short of miraculous; she crafts a world so realistic and fully lived-in, with such fascinating central characters, that even if you disapprove of some of the characters’ choices (and you absolutely will), you still want to see where they go next and the adventures that result. It’s truly an accomplishment, one that deserves to be mentioned alongside other neorealist American films such as The Florida Project (2017) and The Rider (2018).
One of the main reasons for this strong sense of realism is the casting. Other than LaBeouf and Keough and a select few others, all of the actors in this film were found through “street casting”; i.e., Arnold and her crew approaching young people on beaches, streets, parking lots, and construction sites. While doing this is certainly a gamble that can oftentimes make or break a film, none of the acting in this film feels stilted or reveals discomfort in front of the camera. Rather, the actors come off as so natural that oftentimes it feels as though the viewer is eavesdropping on an actual magazine sales crew driving through the Midwest, not watching actors impersonating such a crew.
And the various people that Star and her co-workers come across on their journey feel just as authentic. A common trap that road movies fall into is portraying rural Americans as one-dimensional caricatures, and Arnold avoids this pitfall with ease by subverting the audience’s expectations at multiple points. For example, when Star decides to split off from Jake and recklessly hop into a car with three old white guys in cowboy hats, it’s easy to imagine that this will lead to something horrible and traumatic happening to Star, yet it doesn’t. Instead, she laughs and jokes with them on their backyard patio and they end up buying a few magazine subscriptions from her.
In another scene, Star talks up an older white semi driver at a truck stop and pretends to need a ride from him in order to sell him subscriptions, and they end up having a very sweet conversation in his truck, where he asks her what her dream is, something that no one had ever asked her before. These two scenes perfectly sum up the delicate beauty of this film and its depiction of the American heartland. For Arnold to not only subvert and decimate expectations, but to do it in a way that humanizes people whom many might be quick to demonize for various reasons, is bold and wonderful, and does a lot to further Roger Ebert’s idea of movies as “a machine that generates empathy.”
Adding to the sense of realism is the cinematography, which is almost all handheld and consists of a grimy color palette steeped in warm browns and greens, reflecting the environment the characters travel through. While the handheld documentary style can often become tiresome, Arnold uses it to great effect here, as it illustrates the realism of the storytelling as well as Star’s own inner turmoil. Likewise, Arnold’s unconventional decision to film this in the tight, square Academy aspect ratio works wonders as it forces the viewer to stay with the characters and the situations at hand, only turning to the surrounding landscape of Midwestern America once the camera decides to turn to it. It’s a seemingly small visual choice that ultimately helps this film stay a humanist drama rather than a travelogue of this part of the U.S. (although it very much works on that level too).
Another key to what makes this film work is its use of music. Encompassing a wide variety of sounds from pop to country to rap music to a beautiful use of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dream Baby Dream” in the scene with Star and the trucker, the film’s soundtrack brilliantly underscores Star’s emotional journey while capturing the diverse musical zeitgeist of mid-2010s America with near-perfection. This is especially evident in a scene toward the end of the film in which various members of the crew sing along to Lady Antebellum’s song “American Honey” in a way that evokes the “Tiny Dancer” sing-along in Cameron Crowe’s Almost Famous (2000) while still feeling wholly unique to this world and these characters. As various characters sing different lines of the song, the camera keeps coming back to Star, who refrains from singing and simply sits there, looking around, as if meditating on the lyrics and how they reflect her own life and journey up to this point. It’s a very subtle, powerful choice that sets the stage for the conclusion of Star’s emotional journey in the exquisite final scene (which I won’t spoil).
But the number-one reason American Honey packs the emotional punch that it does is Sasha Lane, who carries this film with tremendous grace and subtlety. Her performance as Star is unquestionably one of the best debut performances of the last twenty years, as she is on screen for almost all of the film’s two hours and forty-three minutes and never hits a false emotional note. Whether she is forcing her way into a semi-truck or quietly observing the goings-on around her, she can communicate a lifetime of trauma and fending for herself with just a stare or the wording of a sentence, and it’s a powerful thing to watch. Providing a strong foil for Lane as Star is Shia LaBeouf, who does solid work as Jake, maintaining an understated and lovely chemistry with her that’s always compelling whenever they’re both on screen. And Riley Keough gives a performance as interesting and memorable as her supporting roles in Logan Lucky (2017) and the still-unreleased Zola (2020), believably capturing the essence of a lost soul who’s become hardened and mean after leading this crew for a long time.
As the end credits rolled on American Honey (2016), I found myself longing for that sense of freedom I experienced in the summers of my childhood, where I had no commitments or responsibilities and could just sit and stare out the window of my mother’s car while singing along to some of my favorite songs. And in the age of COVID-19 and civil unrest in America, I think many people long for the simplicity and freedom of being out on the road, surrounded by people they love, letting loose in song with nothing to hold them back. At its core, American Honey (2016) is a tribute to this sort of freedom. For two hours and forty-three minutes, Andrea Arnold allows you to feel that freedom along Star and the rest of the crew, to bask in the beauty of community, the open road of the American Midwest, and the promise of summer.
Nick Sansone is a writer and aspiring filmmaker from Chicago. A recent summa cum laude graduate of DePaul University’s School of Cinematic Arts, he continues to study film independently and has appeared on different radio programs in the Chicagoland area to discuss contemporary cinema and the Academy Awards.