In my second job ever, I was—and I kid you not—a magazine salesman. The good old-fashioned kind that cold called on the phone. How else would I make the payments on my 1997 Nissan Altima? (I’m aware, there were other ways.) My supervisors would hand me a new section of the Jamaica, Queens phonebook each Monday so that I could convince an unsuspecting, usually deeply uninterested, person to spend an extra $30-40 on something they likely would never read. Even though I was twice the top seller in my short-lived, six-week stint at the company, it was a soul-crushing, Sisyphean task.
The protagonist of Andrea Arnold’s new film “American Honey” finds herself in the door-to-door version of my erstwhile profession. Eighteen-year-old Star (Sasha Lane, riveting) is first seen dumpster-diving for dinner and hitch-hiking home, with two street urchins in tow. It’s positively Dickensian. The bleak house in which she lives with those kids and their father, who is an abusive, drunken lout, is crawling 
with insects and lacquered in despair. What’s a girl to do but escape? A chance earlier encounter with Jake (Shia LaBeouf, more later) in a Big Kmart blasting Rihanna’s “We Found Love”—foreshadowing much?—sets the plot careening into motion. Jake offers Star a job and the chance to relocate to glorious Kansas City. Imagine turning down a rakish young man wearing mud brown pants with suspenders and sporting cinema’s worst rattail since Padawan-vintage Anakin Skywalker. You can’t, and neither can Star, who abandons her makeshift family and hits the road with a band of ne’er-do-wells and misfits.
Most of the ensuing film takes place either in the cargo van that shuttles “the Crew” from town to town or the motels that house them along the way. Their charge is straightforward and positively wholesome. Sell a ton of subscriptions, and bring the slips back to the rotating fleabag headquarters. The group is a sexually and geographically diverse collection of The Youth of Today, clearly derivative of the teens who made “Kids” every adult’s worst nightmare.
In “American Honey,” though, Star is the only character of color. And I think there’s a reason why. Arnold has created a cinematic indictment of capitalism. She chose a beautiful young black woman with dreadlocks as her subject to reinforces Star’s “otherness.” Star never follows Jake’s expert training in the art of the sell. She draws the ire of the Qu
een Bee, Krystal (Riley Keough), who could not be a less fearsome enforcer. She remains one step outside the Crew’s circle, whether because of her preternatural intelligence or her dental hygiene. The film’s story follows Star from her awestruck initiation to her masochistic sexual relationship with Jake to her ambiguous resignation. She is the proletariat’s representative: 20% of subscription earnings are kicked up to Krystal, and the only way to Always Be Closing requires abandoning the authentic self through questionable labor. Or something like that. I’m rusty on my Marx-Engels Reader.
Does the parable succeed? Absolutely. Journeyman DP Robbie Ryan captures the feeling of economic inequality with documentary-esque precision. You can sense the dank, depressive weight of the motel rooms and parking lots in which the Crew plot and play. Ventures to customer neighborhoods, on the other hand, are Technicolor dreamscapes of plenty. Arnold focuses our attention not just on the mundane but also on the miniscule. The camera often holds on moths, tadpoles, birds, and other creatures just so we can observe their curious wandering juxt
aposed with the characters’ aimlessness. The centerpiece scene in which Star carelessly joins three middle-aged cowboys for a poolside barbeque creates genuine anxiety.
I credit Arnold with composing a screenplay that hits all the expected notes for a socioeconomic screed. She must know that it’s a tricky business, focusing a microscope on American excess and exploitation from across the Atlantic. Lars von Trier took massive flak for the outstanding “Dogville” (and the uneven “Manderlay”) because he famously has never set foot on U.S. soil. Arnold’s borderline stereotype-based perspective lacks some credibility even though it artfully holds up a dingy mirror to the American Dream. For example, though gorgeous to behold, setting Star’s most personally compromising scene in an oilfield was a bit on the nose. Her soundtrack choices, including this classic and this excellent remake, are about 75% outstanding. Arnold breaks the 
cardinal rule of movie music, though, toward the end. After earlier having a cast member awkwardly mention a song, which happens to provide the film’s title, she later sets up the cast to sing it in unison. Ugh, no.
Sasha Lane, in her first feature role, is a revelation as Star. The character must switch, often within minutes, between temerity and timidity, and Lane absolutely pulls it off. Her presence is palpable and reminds me of the pre-“Cool Girl” Jennifer Lawrence that blew my mind in “Winter’s Bone.” She may not get an Oscar nod for this role, but she won’t wait long for one.
Believe me, I don’t take pleasure in writing the following. Shia LaBeouf is not an actor worthy of his co-star. For the story to cohere, Jake must come across as an irresistible force of magnetism and machismo. LaBeouf plays him (ahem) as an enfant terrible, but more enfant than terrible. The same incongruity damaged crucial scenes in von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” films. For my money, LaBeouf’s best performance is one in which he never speaks. Cutting all of his 
scenes would have made this film a minor indie classic. Here are a few suggestions for alternative actors that arguably would have elevated the movie . . . just from the “Divergent” series: Miles Teller (obvi), Theo James (ok), hell, even Jai Courtney.
“American Honey” is worth your time despite coming close to overstaying its welcome at an overstuffed 163 minutes. The poetic visuals and the lead performance combine for a powerful, at times deeply unnerving, tale. Contemporary cinema about women and made by women remain, as we are rightfully reminded, exceedingly rare.
Leave it to the male lead to nearly ruin the joint.
CLG Verdict: An engrossing film helmed by a rising “Star.” Come for the stunning, breakout role; don’t leave because of an equally poor casting choice.
American Honey opened Friday September 30.
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