Capone's Art-House Round-Up with AMERICAN HONEY, THE BIRTH OF A NATION, and the reissue of HOWARD'S END!!!

Hey, folks. Capone in Chicago here, with a few films that are making their way into art houses or coming out in limited release around America this week (maybe even taking up one whole screen at a multiplex near you). Do your part to support these films, or at least the good ones…


AMERICAN HONEY
AMERICAN HONEY is a swirling, passionate and chaotic road journey. At nearly three hours, it is an essential epic about youth as well as an intimate portrait of one young woman breaking free of the things that were holding her down and replacing them with something exciting and new, even if those new things aren’t any less of a burden.

The masterful writer-director Andrea Arnold (RED ROAD, FISH TANK, WUTHERING HEIGHTS) has discovered a shining gem in newcomer Sasha Lane. Lane plays Star, who flees her troubled home when she is tempted by group of young people her age driving cross country selling door to door magazine subscriptions. At first, Star thinks the group is led by the charismatic Jake (Shia LaBeouf), but before long, she seems him kowtowing to uber-tough Krystal (Riley Keough, who was last seen in MAD MAX: FURY ROAD), who handles all of the money, accommodations, hirings and firings.

As much as you might roll your eyes at the prospect of sitting through something with this running time, featuring a cast of almost entirely unknowns, I can’t emphasize enough just how exhilarating AMERICAN HONEY truly is. An excellent example of this is watching LaBeouf turn on his seemingly effortless charm that makes him the greatest salesman/con artist I’ve seen in ages. He sizes up each new client while creating a new persona in himself that maximizes his likability in order to close the sale. He’s remarkable. The problem is that when he’s paired with Star to act as her mentor, she keeps screwing up his sales by refusing to be something fake to these strangers. She’s killing his mojo, and it only draws him to her even more. So much of this movie is about figuring out what these two are to each other in the end. I understand why it won two major awards at this year’s Cannes Film Festival.

In one of the especially harrowing sequences, the pair fight and she leaves him only to get picked up by three finely dressed good-ol’ boys. Throwing this firecracker into a barbecue pool party with three middle-aged men seems like a recipe for disaster of some sort, but Star has learned from the best, and before long, she’s got their cash in hand and signatures on the dotted line.

Like all worthy road movie, AMERICAN HONEY has a stellar soundtrack, a great deal of character development during extended sequences in the mini-bus, and an other-worldly quality to the entire film that makes it feel that seemingly meaningless events have major consequences. Director Arnold places her camera among the throng of people, making you almost a part of the conversation, the drinking, the fighting, the rubbing against each other. The film never feels frivolous, despite these young adults having no clear path beyond selling their damn magazines, and that’s the key.

LaBeouf and Lane have such completely different styles of acting, yet they mesh perfectly in a kind of free-form, jazzy groove that makes it clear almost from the first second they spot each other that they will fall into bed together. I don’t ask you to trust me very often, but on this one, I will. AMERICAN HONEY is special. It doesn’t just show you these people; it makes you one with them. And by the end, you realize you’ve spent a whole lot of time with the future of America, and that’s both thrilling and terrifying.


THE BIRTH OF A NATION
It’s time once again to review the movie and not the controversy. Taking its title from probably the most popular, overtly racist films every made, writer-director-star Nate Parker’s THE BIRTH OF A NATION is the story of real-life slave-preacher-turned-slave-rebel-leader Nat Turner, who led a small army of Southern slaves against their owners, killing as many as possible in the process before being put down after about two days of fighting. Since very little is known about Turner’s life, a great deal of this film is fiction, which leads the way to Parker turning him into everything from a Christ figure to a martyr, which in a way betrays Turner’s strength in the history books as being an unremarkable man before he led this rebellion.

THE BIRTH OF A NATION shows us Turner as a boy, best friends with his owner’s son Samuel, who grows up to take over the plantation (and be played by Armie Hammer). Nate is taught to read and write by Samuel’s mother (Penelope Ann Miller), and when he grows older, his knowledge of the bible makes him a great preacher, a fact that is exploited when the farm’s finances are hurting.

At the suggestion of the local priest (Mark Boone Jr.), Samuel rents out Nat to other Georgia farms and plantations with unruly slaves. He quotes a few passages from the bible that encourage slaves to abide by their masters, and that seems to get the job done. Samuel gets the money, and the plantation begins to thrive again. But the entire practice gnaws at Nate’s soul, and after his new wife is assaulted by some local whites (including a slave tracker played quite maliciously by Jackie Earle Haley) and a whipping he receives for back talking, the seeds of uprising are planted.

Winning both the Audience and Grand Jury prizes at Sundance this year (right in the midst of the #OscarsSoWhite campaign leading up to the most recent Academy Awards), THE BIRTH OF A NATION is undeniably a passionate, rousing labor of love from Parker, who also gives a screen-burning performance that seems deliberately ripped from BRAVEHEART (Mel Gibson was something of a mentor to Parker; THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST also seems like a none-too-veiled visual reference here).

Perhaps it’s a result of a smaller budget, or just Parker reaching too far to achieve something that could have been captured more simply, but a great deal of the film feels like an amateur production, with nearly all of the actors going some degree beyond a balanced performance. That being said, I was impressed with Miller’s sweetness in her supporting role. Also doing excellent work is Colman Domingo (from “Fear the Walking Dead”) as Turner’s most trusted ally and fellow slave Hark. He’s not afraid to let an understating performance sell his most emotional moments.

Including images of angels speaking to Turner, as if he is the Chosen One to go into this battle as its spiritual and actual leader feels a little counterproductive. As a preacher going from place to place to help subdue rowdy slaves, Turner saw untold atrocities. He likely wouldn’t have needed the extra push from God to get righteous and angry about the way things were. THE BIRTH OF A NATION tells an important story in American history, and one day, I’m guessing, someone else will tell it better. As it stands, I still think it’s an important movie, worth seeing as an example of filmmaking at its most emotionally raw. But as we all know, making choices and decisions when we’re at our most emotional does not always result in the best decisions being made.


HOWARD’S END
Some of you youngsters may not remember or realize this, but there was a time when period films made by the team of director James Ivory, producer Ismail Merchant, and writer Ruth Prawer Jhabvala (who usually adapted a revered novel) ruled the art-hour roost for about 10 years, beginning in the mid-1980s. Works like A ROOM WITH A VIEW MAURICE, THE REMAINS OF THE DAY (my personal favorite of the bunch), and the breakthrough HOWARD’S END, based (as many of these titles were) on the writings of E.M. Forster. There was meticulous attention paid to every level of British society—from the leisurely rich to the struggling working class. But these examinations weren’t just about the clothes and manners; they dealt with the repressed psychological turmoil that both wealthy and poor experienced, triggered by different things, to be sure, but no less meaningful.

In honor of the film’s 25th anniversary (which I’m pretty sure is next year), HOWARD'S END is being rereleased in a positively breathtaking 4K restoration that acts as a spectacular reminder of the bygone era of Merchant-Ivory-style filmmaking. Watching the film again today reminded me of so many things. For example, this is the film that made me love Emma Thompson. Although I’d seen her in several films before this, Thompson’s portrayal of free-spirited Margaret Schlegel, an Edwardian-era woman who is fiercely protective of her family and friends, but sees few prospects in her romantic life.

She befriends the ailing (and much richer) Ruth Wilcox (the absolutely ethereal Vanessa Redgrave), and the two become inseparable when Ruth’s husband Henry (Anthony Hopkins, only a year after his Oscar win for THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS) is away with their grown children. Separately, Margaret and sister Helen (Helena Bonham Carter) get involved in the life of Leonard Bast (Samuel West), a young clerk whose station in life is a made all the worse when the sisters give him bad career advice by passing along a rumor to Bast from Henry, only to find out the rumor wasn’t accurate.

After Ruth’s passing, Henry develops feelings for Margaret and before long they are married, much to the dismay of Henry’s inheritance-hungry children. A great deal of HOWARD’S END centers around the titular property, a rather ill-fitting, ugly estate that Margaret has fallen for all of its quirky attributes. Little does she know that just before Ruth passed away, she willed the property to Margaret as an act of friendship. Her family kept it from the Schlegels, but in the end, things have a way of working themselves out, even if it must be through the most painful gauntlets. The very different paths the two sisters take through life is sometimes brutal and certainly strains their bonds as Margaret tries her best to be the best wife to her conservative husband, who hides his face when he lets forth with any show of emotion.

The Schlegel sisters are two of the great pairs in literature and the movies. You know almost instantly that you would want them on your side in a pinch, as much as you’d want to avoid nearly every member of the Wilcox clan. Yet somehow, these disparate folks all find a common ground by the end of the film, and even love comes out victorious to a degree. The interconnecting worlds of these characters doesn’t quite reach the level of Dickens, but that isn’t the point.

What’s here is captivating and regal while maintaining a earthy and charming presence. HOWARD’S END may sound like a standard-issue costume drama, but there is a wicked wit and social commentary that is undeniably modern and hooks us in for quite a ride. I hear restorations are in the works for other Merchant-Ivory productions, and that I get one more chance to see them all on the big screen again. It’s where they belong.

-- Steve Prokopy
"Capone"
capone@aintitcool.com
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