While the phrase “nature is healing” was largely a meme created for laughs during the Anthropause, there was a touching grain of truth in it: in the sense that, whether we realized it or not, it meant something comforting to press the button Reset and Give the Earth a little respite from the constant trauma caused by us. In Nora Fingscheidt’s tender, expressively beautiful and totally unclassifiable recovery drama, “The Outrun,” that truth applies profoundly to the human body and spirit, those that are cracked and need only quiet rest to become whole again. Indeed, man and nature are profoundly one in Fingscheidt’s artful poignancy, as fresh and piercingly alive as the ocean spray you can almost smell and feel on your face for much of the film. Coexisting with each other through high and low tides across lonely 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 the best performances of her career in an astonishing resume that is already full of them. Rona is an alcoholic, lost in London’s Hackney party scene. She is in love with the affectionate Daynin (Paapa Essiedu); one moment, she’s a sweet, fun girlfriend and the life of the party; the next, she is aggressively drunk and has completely lost her sense of control, sometimes in life-threatening episodes. We’ve seen other dramas about addiction and alcoholism in the past; It’s never an easy task for an actor to go 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 flighty and rebellious in Rona’s body that he almost seems violently possessed as Rona slowly loses everything she cares about. Sadly, that includes Daynin after a disastrous night, the details of which a pleadingly apologetic Rona tries to remember through genuine tears, but can’t. (Among the many scenes where Ronan will definitely break your heart, this one is near the top.)
Cleverly adapted from Amy Liptrot’s acclaimed 2020 memoir written by Liptrot and Fingscheidt (and guided by Ronan in her first producing credit), the semi-fictional “The Outrun” does not follow these events through a traditional chronology or even an edited structure. conventionally. Instead, Fingscheidt, proving herself to be a talented stylist and thoughtful filmmaker who has the right cinematic instincts to seamlessly marry form and narrative, devises her own method, mirroring Rona’s turbulent headspace with Yunus’ restless camera movements. Roy Imer and Stephan Bechinger’s nervous editing. You’re never exactly lost in “The Outrun,” just disoriented when Rona herself is.
But when she’s finally sober (a state she learns to take “one day at a time,” as her recovery group teaches her), “The Outrun” also eases her nervousness. That shift in tone is immensely noticeable in Rona’s present-tense existence when she’s stranded in her Orkney home with her religious mother and helping her bipolar father on his sheep farm, caring for animals and giving birth to his babies. He also takes a summer job researching birds, during which he comes to terms with everything that happened to him in London. Fingscheidt and Bechinger carefully weave these timelines together, adding Papay’s segment after Rona locks herself inside a cabin following a near-relapse, generating other scholarly interests around the flora and fauna of nature, and finding her inner voice again. (Papay is also the place where the writer Liptrot wrote her memoirs).
To provide the audience with enough cues and signifiers throughout its deliberately intertwined structure, “The Outrun” features Rona with different hair colors, oscillating between icy and fiery hues that reflect her headspace. But even without those markings showing the way like a bright beacon in the night, one would not get lost in “The Outrun.” The film is more of a piece of memoir that is exhilarating in its chaos and serenity than a simple, blandly told narrative. And like any notable memory we cherish, “The Outrun” stays with you in your heart and mind through words and images that may seem small but deeply important.
Among the most notable segments are those that Fingscheidt directs and designs with a documentary filmmaker’s sensibility (and a grainy visual palette), as Rona’s inner voice, protected by Papay, guides us through myths, marine life, fossils and the island community. Sometimes these four facets culminate in one creature: the endearing (and incredibly cute) island selkies, believed to be the afterlife of the dead. All of these pieces are so wonderfully strewn throughout the film that “The Outrun” often comes as a surprise, continually transforming and growing, much like the character whose journey it compassionately follows.
This year, amid the impressive crop of films redefining the way we think about cinema (RaMell Ross’ “Nickel Boys” and Brady Corbet’s “The Brutalist” immediately come to mind), you may not hear the title frequently. “The Outrun” spoke alongside them. But as innovative, demanding, and creatively methodical as the aforementioned filmmakers, Fingscheidt deserves the same level of praise and praise. His “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 magnificent artifact and a cinematic experiment that works wonderfully, one groundbreaking picture at a time, centered around Ronan’s dizzying, soul-restoring performance.