American Honey (2016)

American Honey Review: American Honey is an Indie film directed by the great British filmmaker Andrea Arnold who used her talents as a director to provide one of the best (or even the best) Indie films of 2016. Though rather long, running at 160 minutes however the story picks up at many points keeping us on our toes and waiting for more! I would be rude to not mention the fantastic cinematography which was done by Robbie Ryan, who used a varying amount of different looks and styles in the film to give us an extremely rare and beautiful insight into an America we are not too often exposed to. In this review for the film, I’ll discuss the highlights of the film, the great but often repetitive story, what makes the film uniquely good and my overall verdict on the film. But before I do all that, the reason of how I got to see the film in the first place was the fact I won the application to be BIFA’s Edinburgh Champion! Which has been an amazing experience to have and I look forward to the rest of the Independents season from BIFA, and now onto the review! American Honey is the story of Star (Sasha Lane), who has a very troubled, abusive and strange life. While looking after some children, which are not her own, she goes out food hunting through rubbish bins and any other means of getting food as we find out she lives a very poverty stricken life with very little hope at all. She takes the kids to a store to buy them some cheap drinks and spots Shia LaBeouf’s character Jake with his crew in the store, the two are locked in eye contact until Jake drops his very sparkly phone and she returns the phone to him, and because of this, he offers her the chance to become part of his rag-tag sales team, that go around the USA selling various magazine subscriptions in the bet to gain money and explore the USA. This is an offer she can’t refuse and goes with Jake and the rest of the crew to become one of the sale assistants and to ultimately join this strange but connected assortment of people on their business trip/party road trip. The rest of the film explores her slow change of character and the actions and attitude she develops while becoming ever closer to the other members of the crew, especially Jake, which she forms a sort of but not official relationship with. All while they travel to different parts of the US, from rich suburban areas, oil fields and run down impoverished ghettos and towns, which actually could be used as a very good case study into the different levels of economic quality for the USA .To conduct their business and gain the most amount of money from their subscriptions. The crew parties hard, does wildly crazy stunts and has a really great time together, which Star ends up becoming very integrated into. While the story has many ups downs and constantly has something new to add into the mix such as the now sexual relationship between Star and Jake, new crew members, different locations, new parties and new adventures they end up going through. As there is many unique points in the story, it can seem very repetitive. The formula kind of goes as follows, new location = new clients and opportunities, something bad happens, some kind of party or some sort of ‘close encounter’ happens and then this repeats with only slight variations. Now this is all well and good but when this happens 4 or 5 times, you really feel like the story has been significantly stretched out. Also while watching the film, I couldn’t help but wonder how the film was going to end and out of all the scenarios and idea I could come up with for a semi-satisfying ending, we are instead treated to a somewhat disappointing ending in my humble opinion to the whole film, though the ending could signify some sort of huge character change using a visual metaphor, however I couldn’t quite piece it together. What holds the film together is the creative acting, which uses creative fantastic dialogue and really nailed down performances to keep the cohesion going for the storyline however the way we are shown the story through the great cinematography in a different aspect ratio first of all, the very warmly saturated colours and grading of the film and the great striking visuals of the film capture what it is to be young, wild and free. The footage used really shows the characters in a way that is striking and so well done it can not be ignored. One of the best visual styles of a live-action film I have seen in a small wee while. Overall, American Honey gives a striking visual look into the journey of a young woman on her road to getting a life and going on to have a wild and crazy adventure. With a very interesting but repetitive story, it shows us a wildly different America and the way a small rag-tag conducts their small business. It is a fantastic film that is one of the Indie highlights of the year, very bold and very well crafted. A film that is well worth a watch and something that you should add to your top film list of 2016. 4/5