Again, it feels realistic to large group conversations, but only shows youth culture as vibrant in that multiple kids are speaking at once. When they do talk, it’s in a mumblecore style where five people speak in vague terms simultaneously. Only when viewed metatextually is the flat characterisation forgivable otherwise, we are subjected to three hours in the company of people we’ll never relate to by design.
MOVIE AMERICAN HONEY SKIN
On the other hand, you could easily view the role of Star as a clear cipher for Arnold: an outsider looking into this culture, who will never truly be able to get under the skin of those around her. It feels realistic, but if that’s the major generational insight, then society has raised the current generation to be incredibly boorish, in spite of the party lifestyle portrayed elsewhere. The majority of the cast are viewed only sitting in a van, singing along to rap music, in some of American Honey‘s most tedious sequences. source: A24Īmerican Honey doesn’t feel like a snapshot of a vibrant youth culture as many have claimed, because it is so poorly characterised.
They may always be central in the frame, yet they end up being so peripheral in the viewer’s imaginations, it is hard to imagine anybody claiming the supporting roles made an impression. Although this means we get a strong central performance from Sasha Lane, the very definition of a star-making role, it means the end result is a close to three hour stretch populated by characters who mostly exist as mere archetypes. Home is but a memory, with her life now lived entirely attempting to sell to middle class suburbs where she could never fit in.ĭespite boasting a giant ensemble cast of eccentric characters, Arnold’s screenplay decides to focus entirely on Star, helping to see the country through the eyes of an outsider who feels like she’ll never fit in with American society. He offers her a role as part of this posse, travelling across the country and making a living selling magazine subscriptions. When at a K-Mart one day, she sees Jake ( Shia LaBeouf) and his large crew, becoming immediately transfixed. Poor and without a job, she scavenges for food in bins to feed her younger siblings, due to an alcoholic, abusive father at home and a mother with no interest in raising them elsewhere in the city. From Working Class Britain to America- Same Style IntactĪmerican Honey’s story follows Star (newcomer Sasha Lane), an 18-year-old girl in a working class nowhere town in some indistinctive corner of the Midwest. Arnold is different to those problematic auteurs in that she depicts the reckless hedonism with a sense of empathy, a commendable decision, albeit one that ensures American Honey is easy to admire but close to impossible to actually like.
The comparisons to the works of Larry Clark and Harmony Korine are unfounded, names dropped simply as this is a snapshot of a jaded youth culture that doesn’t fit into mainstream norms. Many audiences have been so transfixed by the way Arnold and her long-term cinematographer Robbie Ryan have captured the sweeping vistas of America, a world completely alien to the council estates of earlier films Red Road and Fish Tank, that they have seemed to ignore the fact this is unmistakably a distinctive piece of work. Translating her social realist style across the Atlantic, keeping the inherent themes relevant to the lower classes intact, would seem close to impossible, although due to an unfortunate stroke of luck, the Presidential election has made the general idea of class in an overwhelmingly middle class country relevant yet again. Andrea Arnold is without a doubt cinema’s leading creator of stories depicting the trials and tribulations of working class women, with an entirely non-judgemental eye.
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