An intimate look into a healing brain: A Review of The Outrun (2024)

By Entertainment Editor Tess O’Regan

The room is dark and then it’s not. Fluorescent pink flashes through dry ice. A twin column of blue follows. The lights are weak and flicker to a beat but they are enough to see the outline of shadows, bodies really, writhing on a dancefloor. The camera pushes in on a familiar face in profile, its expression almost visible, and— 

Then we are underwater. The misty dance floor has become a murky seabed. Weeds dangle upwards like wet hair in reversed gravity, long strands of it clinging to a sandy scalp as it reaches for the sky. Then the strands shudder and separate, forced aside by a dark blubbery body. A seal, but no— 

A sheep, braying, lambing, somewhere north, where everything is bare and endless and green green green. In the distance we can hear white horses crashing against the shore. We cannot see them. Except now we can. There’s a child on a beach, searching for curiosities. No. Switch again. There is a child under the kitchen table. There is a man screaming. A woman crying. Broken glass. In a different kitchen: more broken ware. More screaming, crying. In the morning, bandages. In the morning, anguish. In the morning, and in the night before—and the night before, and the night before—there are bottles and bottles and bottles. For two hours, the image flickers between past and present, London and Scotland, as The Outrun (2024) attempts to insert us into a recovering alcoholic’s brain.

The Outrun (directed by Nora Fingscheidt, produced by and starring Saoirse Ronan) is a mess of memory. A good mess. Ronan plays Rona, a young Scottish woman who had been pursuing a PhD in biology in London, while struggling with alcoholism. The film ostensibly follows Rona as she navigates her newfound sobriety. Fresh out of rehab, Rona returns to her family in the Orkney Islands. Here she contends with her separated parents: a loving mother who has found solace in God, and a father who has his own struggles with mental illness and addiction. To establish a life of her own, Rona gets a job as a wildlife surveyor. But as this plot unfurls so too does it begin to unravel, and what seemed like a straightforward story becomes complicated by a non-linear narrative.

Interwoven with present-day Orkney are scenes from Rona’s life before sobriety. We see her dancing with friends at a club in London, and, at the same moment, drunk out of her mind, alone in a bar at closing time. Memories intrude upon memories which intrude on the present. The action hurtles between Orkney and London at double speed, but somehow it’s not disorientating. Ronan acts as an anchor, the centre of every scene. Her onscreen presence is all encompassing. The Outrun might not have much to offer character-wise outside of its protagonist, but Ronan’s acting more than makes up for it. Time might not be in order but, as the camera clings to Rona, we get the sense that maybe the emotional experience of the film is. Rona processes her addiction and brings us along for the ride. We see life as it is inside her brain; not one consistent cohesive story, but flashes of sense memory. One moment she’s an adult sitting by a canal in London, pretending she can control the wind with her mind, the next she’s a kid, watching her dad do the exact same thing.

The Outrun is a triumph of perspective. It’s Ronan’s film and Ronan shines, but that is at least in part due to Stephan Bechinger’s editing and Yunus Roy Imer’s cinematography (both previous collaborators with Fingscheidt). This is a beautiful film. From underwater shots to city streets and the Scottish coast, the world feels raw and alive around us. And that’s not even accounting for the costuming (which adds another thrilling layer to the disorientating timescape of the film through outfit-repeating), or the hairstyling (the various bleach and colour jobs Ronan wears throughout are sure to have an impact on trends if this movie takes off).

There is perhaps too much to be said about the production of this movie, or its explorations of nature, addiction and family. For now, suffice it to say that The Outrun is well worth the watch, especially if you’re considering early Oscar contenders for Best Actress.