The imagery and themes Arnold employ certainly feel familiar to me, and allowed me to newly understand something about my own search for community and belief. One summer during middle school, my mom bribed me to pack my bags and spend a week at a Baptist church camp, not far from where Star meets Jake in that Oklahoma supermarket. Sleeping in a cabin and reading the Bible on the porch were experiences that I hated at the time: It felt like everyone else's Bible had a book called "Faith" and a chapter called "How to Perform It Convincingly" — pages that seemed missing from my copy.

But through Arnold’s lens, I understood what everyone else was discovering in those midnight Bible studies that I wasn't: that the right song or the right prayer might just open the door to some kind of salvation. What American Honey posits is that a church with a steeple isn’t the only place where a sense of holiness can rise up: that halo effect can come from community, not just doctrine. In some ways, faith might reveal itself through booze instead of closely reading the Bible. Or while you're traveling the country in the back of an 11-seat van, singing at the top of your lungs.

The feeling of community — of graced belonging — does not necessarily protect American Honey's characters from falling away from the faith. Star is still naive enough to think that anything is fair game to trade for money, even her own body; Jake's relationship with the mag crew's leader, Crystal, is clearly on the wrong side of a line. In the end, the dreams Star and Jake chase seem hollow. But Arnold's camera moves through all this with an aching kind of intimacy. American Honey is a beautiful film that just might make you believe — but in what, you'll have to decide for yourself.