Every addict spirals in their own way, for their own reasons, but art about addiction, like addiction itself, can be mind-numbing in its sameness. Picture scenes of excess followed by degradation, shame, teary promises of “never again,” resolve to start anew. Then the record skips and we’re right back to the beginning of the song, and it doesn’t sound any better on repeat listen. The Outrun hits similar beats, yet manages to do so in ways that feel novel at first, and ultimately transcendent.
The Outrun is based on the bestselling memoir by Amy Liptrot, but Liptrot and director Nora Fingscheidt roam from the source text to make the film its own unique thing. Saoirse Ronan (who also produced along with partner Jack Lowden) plays Rona, Liptrot’s surrogate, a biology student in London whose partying turns worrying then blooms into full-bore, hiding-bottles-behind-the-sink alcoholism. We first meet her in grim condition, shoving her way into a bar after closing and downing every stranger’s half-empty glass she can get her hands on. Initially she tries to charm the bar staff – you can tell the good-times gal persona used to be an effective tool for her – but soon she turns nasty and raging, just a slip of a thing snarling at a bouncer twice her size who has to bodily remove her and drop her in the street. You might think she’s hit bottom, but she’s got a ways to go yet.
The film doesn’t move chronologically, but instead follows the eddy of Rona’s thoughts. Newly released from rehab, she’s gone home to Scotland’s Orkney Islands. There, she helps her father (Dillane) on his sheep farm and through his manic episodes, dodges her mother’s (Reeves) efforts to invite her to Bible study group, and above all tries to cling to her new sobriety while grappling with years – and a boyfriend (Essiedu) – she lost to her addiction.
Rona narrates throughout, in a lyrical tumble of folklore, science, and raw emotion, illustrated in archival images, animation, flashbacks, and startling footage of the Scottish landscape. The film powerfully conveys Rona’s connection to the land and how two places can tug on a heart at once – how in urban Hackney she imagines a fox in an alley, and in rural Orkney she listens to EDM on her headphones, the pounding in step with the rumble of the ocean and the mythic beasts that locals swear dwell under it.
Barely 30, Ronan has so seamlessly made the transition from the watchful child of Atonement to the angsty teen of Lady Bird and young émigré of Brooklyn to now fully adult roles, I fear we may be taking her for granted. (To be fair, she’s been Oscar-nominated four times already, and I’ll eat my hat if she doesn’t get another nod for The Outrun.) All windburned skin and whiplash swivels from tightly coiled to totally chaotic, she’s mesmerism onscreen. There are two moments in particular – polar opposite modalities – that knocked me sideways.
In the first, when she is fledgling sober, we see her consider a drink and decide … yes. Her body is all stillness but she crackles with energy; the second she decides to break her sobriety, it’s like she’s been plugged into a socket.
The second is something more triumphant – and the reason you shouldn’t be scared off by the dark places The Outrun goes. In it, Ronan, and her empathic director, catch without words the sensation of when someone who has been buried under unfathomable pain and grief and trauma discovers they still have the capacity for joy. It is pure catharsis – not an easy thing to capture onscreen – and in that moment, I was the thing that felt suddenly plugged into a light socket: electrified.
This article appears in October 4 • 2024.
