If there are films made with the Academy in mind, The Outrun is one of them. It’s a towering triumph by Nora Fingscheidt about a woman’s ability to overcome an alcohol addiction that is almost life-destroying at the tipping point of her 30s, and yes, it is one of those where the need for alcohol and the relapse hits at the same time that the plot needs it to, but it’s anchored around a weepy, no-holds barred performance by the incredibly gifted Saoirse Ronan, who will surely get nominated for the Oscar for this. Her efforts are commendable and the film hits all the right notes – think redemption movies like Wild that came out about ten years ago (earning Reese Witherspoon an Oscar nomination) for something similar.
The Outrun introduces us to Rona experiencing another downward spiral; she’s been kicked out of the pub for staying past last orders and desperately calls for another drink. She believes she can only be happy when she’s drunk, and there is some truth to that for her: being sober forces her to confront her reality, she’s a masters student without a purpose living in London, her boyfriend has a stable career and richer friends than her, and her parents are separated and stuck in a small village on the Orkney Islands where her dad experiences manic bipolar episodes. It’s a film that treads the line between depression/anxiety and alcoholism as an escape from that superbly, often showing us how overwhelming London can be to outsiders and how easy it is to get sucked in. It’s the allure; it’s the promise of escape from the small village life that everyone is leaving behind. At home you’re anxious, you don’t really fit in, all your friends that you once knew have moved on – anyone who’s lived in a small rural community will know this: the people that were once there have moved on.
The endless walks on the beach listening to electronic music gives a sense of escape from that, never slowing the film down, allowing Rona to escape from the overwhelming sense of London before it inevitably becomes too much. Ronan bears her vulnerability, heart and soul on the screen for us here and it becomes a rare triumph: mixed emotions clattering through; beautifully shot – the early acts sees Rona comparing London to the Orkney islands and the hustling community of Hackney, before we eventually see her return. It’s a non-linear narrative that jumps back and forth between Rona’s journey towards sobriety; it’s not perfect, it never is, and drawing from Amy Liptrot’s memoir and transporting it onto a real place for real people makes it a triumph. The Orkney landscapes are tough, isolating rugged that would break even the hardest soul and The Outrun does a fascinating job at moulding its characters’ edges around them – it’s the first film that communicates with its rural community in a way that instantly made me want to move back to the small village that I grew up on. It also accepts that sometimes you can move on, you don’t need to tie yourself down – some people can’t be helped, everyone needs to make their own journey – but The Outrun recognises that it does good things for the ones who can.
It feels like a memoir adaption and is paced like a novel; but don’t let that stop you – The Outrun handles its source material in a lot less of a blunter way than say, The Uglies. It never trivialises its subject matter and recognises that human beings are complex, vibrant creatures full of their own uniqueness and strengths. The escapism and noise of the city sometimes becomes too overwhelming that the sense of quiet brought about by the sea and the nature brings the validity out in a way that a lot of the city sometimes can’t, where everyone is putting a performance on for someone. It is at the end of the day, an honest showcase of the life of an addict, the constant ups and downs that people experience, the sheer denseness of its script and the ode to rural communities in the face of it all; and the big city itself – it’s not a condemnation of its lifestyle at all but showcases the allure of London in particular perfectly, and it’s easily a movie that is capable of captivating you and luring you in and keeping you there. It ends on a high, really – and Ronan’s performance makes it well worth the price of admission.
