We meet Star (Sasha Lane) in a dumpster, looking for food. Quickly, she encounters a group of teenagers in a nearby mega-store and sees a chance to escape her unhappy home life. This group of smiling, jumping, dancing people, led by a flirtatious Jake (Shia LaBeouf), offer a way out for Star. Where they’re going to take her isn’t as important as the idea that they’re going somewhere, anywhere other than here. She learns that Jake is one of the leaders of the group, who travel the country selling magazines door to door. They really just do it enough to get food and lodging so they can keep doing it. They’re living day to day—partying, drinking, and singing their way across the country.
There are scant few traditional narrative elements to “American Honey.” There’s a bit of a villain in Riley Keough’s Krystal, the head of the magazine sales group who collects the cash and makes the assignments. And there’s an inevitable bit of a love story between Star and Jake, although it’s not a film anyone could call a romance. This is a not a film tied to plot. It often follows Star on adventures in the magazine sales trade, bringing her back to the group after random encounters across the country. And it is a film in which people convey emotion more through action and music than dialogue. When they’re happy, they dance—Arnold’s film is filled with pop songs, many of which are played in their entirety. When they sing along, they’re expressing the feeling of community they have created and that they need so badly. There’s a key moment near the end in which they all start slowly singing along to the same tune, almost one line at a time, until they are all together—multiple voices in common song.
Arnold shoots “American Honey” in her typical full-frame 1.33:1 style and it creates a visually fascinating aesthetic. One might think that it would hamper a film that could have so easily taken advantage of the widescreen vistas of the heart of the country, but it’s effective because it keeps us with our characters instead of visually wandering the landscape. It creates a privacy, a sense that we’re in the van with Star and the rest of the gang, joining them on this journey. And Arnold and cinematographer Robbie Ryanoften shoot their teenagers from below, casting them larger than life against the blue sky.
