Legendary filmmaker Francis Ford Coppola spent forty years trying to get Megalopolis, his sprawling, sci-fi epic fable about the Roman and American empires, made. Now 85, it might turn out to be the director’s last film. He waited about a decade too long for his examination of how and why empires crumble to be relevant. Maybe if he had made and released Megalopolis before Donald Trump’s infamous ride down that golden escalator, I would have praised his maximalist primal scream about our current cultural and political moment as visionary and prescient. Instead, what Megalopolis has on offer feels like a thin imitation of our nightmarish reality.
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As improbable as it sounds, American Honey melds the sensibilities of disparate movies like Easy Rider and Lawrence of Arabia to craft a modern portrait of driftless youth. Director Andrea Arnold’s film is epic, funny, heartbreaking, and challenging. It captures the cynicism and hopelessness that characterizes the way many U.S. citizens view the American Dream. Through all the unfairness and terrible situations life throws at Star, Arnold’s main character, American Honey gives us a glimpse into the life of a survivor. Star refuses to be broken, and this quality allows for a hopeful ending to the movie that is both uplifting and defies easy explanation. In short, American Honey is a stunning achievement. It’s a movie that stirred my emotions and gave me a view into a world so different from my own that it might as well have been from an alien planet.
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