While the phrase "nature is healing" was largely a meme created for laughter during the Anthropause, there was a touching shred of truth in it—in that, whether we realized it or not, it meant something soothing to hit the reset the button and give the earth a tiny break from the constant trauma caused by us. In Nora Fingscheidt's tender, expressively beautiful, and altogether unclassifiable recovery drama "The Outrun," that truth deeply applies to the human body and spirit—those that are cracked and just in need of a quiet recess to be whole again. In fact, man and nature are profoundly one in Fingscheidt's inventive heart-stirrer, as crisp and piercingly alive as the ocean spray you can almost smell and feel on your face throughout much of the film. They co-exist with one another through tides high and low across lonesome cityscapes, the majestic Orkney Islands (an archipelago in Scotland), and the magnificent Papa Westray (or Papay) Island off the coast of Orkney.
An unforgettable Saoirse Ronan plays Rona in one of her career-best performances across a jaw-dropping resume already full of them. Rona is an alcoholic, lost in Hackney's party scene in London. She is in love with the caring Daynin (Paapa Essiedu)—one minute, she's a fun, tender girlfriend and the life of the party; the next, she is aggressively drunk and has lost complete sense of control, sometimes in potentially life-threatening episodes. We've seen other dramas around addiction and alcoholism in the past—it's never an easy task for an actor to head down such a dark rabbit hole of trauma and make it believable, too. But Ronan's performance here easily becomes its own beast, even its own genre, as the disease of alcoholism takes over Rona's life. In fact, Ronan is so mercurial and unruly in Rona's body that she almost seems violently possessed as Rona slowly loses all that matters to her. That sadly includes Daynin in the aftermath of a disastrous night, the details of which a pleadingly apologetic Rona tries to remember in genuine tears but can't. (Among the many scenes where Ronan will definitely break your heart, this is near the top.)
Deftly adapted from Amy Liptrot's acclaimed 2020 memoir by Liptrot and Fingscheidt (and shepherded by Ronan in her first producing credit), the semi-fictionalized "The Outrun" doesn't follow these events through a traditional chronology or even a conventionally edited structure. Instead, Fingscheidt—proving that she is both a gifted stylist and thoughtful filmmaker who has the right cinematic instincts to marry form and narrative seamlessly—devises her own method, reflecting Rona's turbulent headspace with Yunus Roy Imer's restless camera moves and Stephan Bechinger's jumpy editing. You're never exactly lost in "The Outrun"—just disoriented when Rona herself is.
But when she is finally sober—a state of being she learns to embrace "one day at a time," as her recovery group teaches her—"The Outrun" also slows down in its jitteriness. That change in tone is immensely noticeable in Rona's present-tense existence when she is stranded in her Orkney home with her religious mother and helping her bipolar dad on his sheep farm, tending to animals and delivering their babies. She also takes on a summer job researching birds, during which she reconciles with all that's happened to her in London. Fingscheidt and Bechinger thoughtfully weave together these timelines, adding the Papay segment after Rona shuts herself inside a cabin on the heels of a near-relapse, growing other academic interests around nature's flora and fauna, finding her inner voice again. (Papay is also where writer Liptrot penned her memoir.)
To give the audience enough signposts and signifiers throughout its deliberately intertwined structure, "The Outrun" presents Rona with different hair colors, ranging between icy and fiery tones reflecting her headspace. But even without those markings that show the way like a bright lighthouse in the nighttime, one wouldn't lose their way in "The Outrun." The film is more an exhilarating memory piece in its chaos and serenity than a blandly told, straightforward narrative. And like any remarkable memory we hold dear, "The Outrun" sticks with you in your heart and mind across words and images that might seem small but deeply matter.
Among the most notable segments are those that Fingscheidt directs and fashions with a documentarian's sensibility (and a grainy visual palette), when the Papay-sheltered Rona's inner voice guides us through the island's myths, sea life, fossils and community. Sometimes, these four facets culminate in one creature—the island's endearing (and impossibly cute) selkies, thought to be the afterlife of the dead. All these pieces are so wonderfully sprinkled throughout the movie's running time that "The Outrun" often feels surprising, continually morphing and growing, just like the character whose journey it compassionately trails.
This year, amid the impressive crop of films that redefine the way we think of cinema—RaMell Ross' uniquely-shot "Nickel Boys" and Brady Corbet's grandly-scaled "The Brutalist" immediately come to mind—you might not often hear the title "The Outrun" spoken alongside them. But every bit as innovative, exacting, and creatively methodical as the aforesaid filmmakers, Fingscheidt deserves the same level of praise and acclaim. Her "The Outrun" celebrates rebirth, the spirit of a curious mind, and the restorative powers of nature and solitude as a cure for turmoil and loneliness. It's a gorgeous artifact and a cinematic experiment that works beautifully, one innovative frame at a time, centered on Ronan's soaring and soul-restoring performance.
