The Outrun

Greetings again from the darkness. The best movies revolving around alcoholism usually make us feel like we are intruding on someone's personal train wreck. Three that come to mind, each resulting in at least one Oscar, are LEAVING LAS VEGAS (1995), DAYS OF WINE AND ROSES (1962), and THE LOST WEEKEND (1945). This one is based on the 2016 memoir by Amy Liptrot, who also adapted the book for the screen with director Nora Fingscheidt (known for her festival favorite SYSTEM CRASHER, 2019).

Having already been nominated for four Oscars, there is little debate that Saoirse Ronan is one of the top actors of her generation. And this may be her best performance yet. As Rona, she captures the quiet desperation and loneliness that isn't always so quiet. We see Rona as the unemployed, Masters-degreed, sloppy drunk party girl. We see her as the drunken victim of sexual violence. We see her as the next-day apologetic drunk who destroys a relationship. We see her in rehab and attending AA meetings. We see her relapse. We see her strained parental relations, and we see her in near isolation in hopes of kicking an addiction that she's not even sure she wants to kick. It's heartbreaking when she admits, "I can't be happy sober." We feel for those who have experienced this with loved ones.

Living in London, Rona is all about the excitement and energy of dancing and partying and socializing ... and drinking. She says she likes how it makes her feel, ignoring the next day misery and regret. Her boyfriend, Daynin (Paapa Esiedu) is supportive and understanding, right up until the point where he's had too much of her self-destructive ways. Rona finally accepts rehab and after 90 days, she heads home to Orkney - a sparsely populated archipelago off the north coast of Scotland. Rona's parents are divorced. Her mom (Saskia Reeves) has turned to religion, while her bipolar dad (Stephen Dilane) lives in a caravan and works his sheep farm on his good days. The desolate environment lacks the constant temptations of London (though she still finds a few), and Rona hopes time in Orkney will be restorative to her health and spirit.

Filmmaker Fingscheidt makes some interesting choices. The film jumps around in time with Rona's flashbacks to moments in her past - some going back to childhood. This jumping around reflects the mental struggles she goes through in her quest for sobriety. There is also a substantial amount of science and nature included. In voiceover, Rona details the specifics of addictive drinking, as well as the mythology of seals and selkies. Saoirse Ronan is superb throughout, yet two scenes stood out for me. The first is when she meets a stranger on the street, displaying her desperation for companionship and socialization. The second comes when she explains to her mother how seaweed is her new passion (her new addiction?) and is her focus for the future.

The only thing close to being as photogenic as Saoirse Ronan is the coastal Scottish landscape. It's both breathtaking for us and claustrophobic at times for Rona as she fights the urges. Rona's job with RSPB had me doing a quick Google search for endangered Corncrakes, and though most of the film left me emotionally drained, watching Rona 'conduct the ocean' provided a welcome jolt of joy.

Opens in theaters on October 4, 2024.

If you are fan of the very adaptable Saoirse Ronan then you'll probably love this - she throws just about everything into the role of "Rona". She has returned to her mother's home in Orkney to recover from a fairly torrid time of booze and drugs in London. The timelines are threaded together to drip feed us the causes of her current predicament whilst looking at her own efforts to get - and stay - clean. Of course, there are domestic issues at home too with her father suffering from bi-polar disorder and her mother having turned to religion which add to the turbulence of her life. In the end, she takes a job working on a remote island for the RSPB trying to find an example of the once plentiful but now rare corn crake. With the weather closing in on her small cottage and her determined to get well again despite the familial pressures, the woman has her work cut out for her. Can she stay the course or is a relapse inevitable? It is a strong effort from Ronan here, and Andrew Dillane also delivers quite effectively as her dad - especially once the film has got up an head of steam and the characters more fully develop. The photography of this sometimes beautiful and other times bleak environment adds really well to the overarching sense of the claustrophobic as the story plays out. Her self-imposed isolation flying in the face of her naturally more gregarious personality. It doesn't try to reinvent the wheel when it comes to the treatment techniques and struggles involved here, but it does provide us with a powerfully character-led drama that must have cost a fortune in hair dye and doesn't offer any rose-tinted solutions.

Saoirse Ronan could easily have a second career narrating nature documentaries.

Never underestimate how difficult it is to play various stages of drunk, addiction and sobriety and Ronan nails it. Movies with a distinct cinematic style are becoming increasingly rare so I'm so grateful for what Nora Fonscheidt achieved with her visual storytelling The colours and textures were just stunning especially around perspective and memory.

Obviously it's the Saoirse show but the supporting cast is pitch perfect, especially Stephen Dillane and Saskia Reeves as her parents. Paapa Essideu is such a subtle screen presence but the camera just loves him.

I don't know what to make of this film. It feels simultaneously kind of moving and dull. Maybe I had high expectations that were too high. Before watching the film, I'd read several reviews about how amazing, raw, and transcendent this film was. So, while watching, I kept waiting for something big or truly searing to happen, but that never came. So when the film ended, I thought to myself, "Is that really it?" This could've been so much more disturbing and visceral than it was. There is so much unwarranted hype around this film. It's meandering, unengaging, and uninvolving. The film could've been darker and more cumbersome, thus packing more of a wallop.

Don't get me wrong here. It does have some strengths. While watching, I was enamored with Saoirse Ronan's acting. She truly shines here in a powerhouse performance that's equal parts explosive and subtle. But great acting and cinematography don't make a great movie if the writing is tenuous and unengaging much of the time, as is the case here. At times the film is intoxicating and sobering. And at times it's jejune and tedious. There is no real plot here. Much like the lead character, the film itself is quite aimless. We pretty much just follow a young woman dealing with alcoholism and how that affects people, and that's pretty much it; not much really happens.

I know the film is based on a memoir, and in that format, the travelogue moments work. But on film, it's very jarring to jump from scenes of seeing a young woman in the throes of alcoholism to pictorials of Orkney animals and landscapes. This happens multiple times throughout the film. It just felt really strange and unnecessary. The same thing happens with the random moments of Rona narrating about the island's mythological history feels odd and arbitrary. The narration in general doesn't add much to the film.

The editing really sullies the film. The pacing is mediocre, with some parts of the film interesting and moving, and some parts of the film really slow and boring. There are random jump cuts and things are told out-of-sequence to the point that it's confusing. The change in Rona's hair color is apparently used as a device for the audience to understand where in time she is, but it doesn't help much. The film is supposed to be grounded, poignant, and touching, and it does sometimes feel that way, but much of the time isn't really. It feels kind of cold. The few surreal and lighter scenes of Rona conducting the sea and the weather, of her swimming amongst the seals, of her in a rave that only turns out to be a memory, and of her acting like she's riding a ship when in reality she was in a building overseeing the sea, were interesting and fun.

The film is worth checking out, albeit I'm sure some will find it dull. The acting is great. I mentioned Ronan, who will likely deservedly receive an Oscar nomination for her performance in this, but Stephen Dillane and Paapa Essiedu are also standouts. The cinematography and the film's use of lighting, punctuated by the landscapes and the contrast of the urban London versus the bucolic Orkney, is beautiful.

It's not often that I leave a cinema feeling inspired by a film. The Outrun is one such movie. I have always been an advocate of the healing power of the natural world and watching this beautiful, but sometimes harrowing film, reinforced my philosophy. Sometimes the best stories are the simple ones and this is one of them. Saoirse Ronan produces and stars as the main character Rona who was bought up on the Orkney Isles, but hankers for the bright lights of London like so many other young people from isolated communities often do. The film does well to portray the pitfalls of living in a big city, but also deserves credit for showing the Orkney Isles as a clearly beautiful, but sometimes desolate place. In the same week I have also been to see two big budget films, but the Outrun was by far the best of the three albeit on a fraction of the budget. If you want to see a film that will make you feel more positive about life then I recommend you see this movie. I am glad that I did.