The Outrun (film review)
The Outrun is based on a 2016 memoir by a Scottish writer relating her struggles with, and slow recovery from, alcoholism.
By all accounts, the film is faithful to the book. It follows a biology graduate, played by Saoirse Ronan, as she wrecks her professional and personal life. The drinking, the doomed attempts to quit, the relapses, the protracted breakup with the man she loves, the family tensions (her father’s psychiatric problems don’t help) are described with brutal honesty.
The story is told in short, sharp, impressionistic strokes. The chronology of the protagonist’s binges, failed job interviews and disputes with the boyfriend is as blurred as her own memories of these incidents. They might be set in Scotland or London, where she lives for a while, but the details of time and place don’t really matter.
From the changing state of her messily dyed hair, you understand that her addiction has stretched over years.
The latter part of the film is set in Orkney, the North Sea archipelago where she grew up. There - amid seals, storm-battered rocks and kind-hearted natives - our heroine finds redemption and a sense of purpose. She returns to scientific work. She is even reconciled with her Christian mother. She can’t do much for her institutionalised father, but as least she tries.
The point of a personal memoir is to be, well, personal. Readers need to be told everything about that fascinating subject that is you.
In its faithfulness to the book, The Outrun takes a deep dive into someone’s world. We are made privy not just to her experience of substance abuse, but also to her objects of study (I learned a lot about the corn crake, a migratory bird), her sense of identity as an islander and connection with Nordic folklore, as well as her musical tastes (techno, pumped through headphones).
An internal monologue that runs through the movie includes this examination of a woman’s “personal geology”:
“My body is a continent. Forces are at work in the night. A bruxist, I grind my teeth in my sleep, like tectonic plates. When I blink the sun flickers, my breath pushes the clouds across the sky and the waves roll into the shore in time with my beating heart. Lightning strikes every time I sneeze, and when I orgasm, there’s an earthquake (…) My lovers are tectonic plates and stone cathedrals.”
I’ve shortened the passage, but you get the point. Whether you regard it as exquisitely lyrical or cringingly self-indulgent, this soliloquy contributes a whole minute to a film that is two hours long.
I ended up wishing that The Outrun had been more focused. The scriptwriters (who include the book’s author) have plenty to say on the agony of addiction and the healing beauty of Orkney. By going for the portrait of a woman in full, they have diluted those insights.
My verdict: 3 out of 5.
