Films for Breakfast

Films about addiction are so easy to fumble – you can either totally miss the mark with being empathetic towards how much of a disease it is to those who struggle with any kind of addiction, or you can also swing the other way into being fully sappy and sentimental instead of showing the harsh realities of what it does to yourself and others. Luckily for The Outrun, director Nora Fingscheidt takes a different approach to how you’d normally see addiction portrayed on film and decides to tell the story in a wholly unique narrative style that goes back and forth in time at a whim. While this is a bit jarring at first, the film quickly reveals that its style and presentation is a strength in conveying the toll alcoholism has on your life and the limited time you have.

The film is based off of Amy Liptrot’s memoir of the same name, which follows Rona (Saoirse Ronan), a young a woman who returns to her childhood home in Scotland after struggling with alcoholism in London. Within the backdrop of her home of Orkney Islands, she tries to come to terms with her addiction and how her troubled past played into it. On top of being a powerful view on the tight grip addiction has on a person, it’s also a deeply personal story about coming to terms with familial trauma, loneliness, and her strained relationships. Saoirse Ronan gives one of her absolute best performances to date as Rona, conveying both the drive to become a better person, as well as showing how deeply she is struggling to hold her demons at bay.

Fingscheidt’s unique narrative and directorial style, impressive cinematography from DP Yunus Roy Imer, and Saoirse Ronan’s incredible performance pave way for this to be an immensely personal look at alcoholism. I was really blown away by how much you step into Rona’s shoes here, feeling every high and low she has immensely. It reminded me a lot of 2018’s Beautiful Boy, in the sense that it perfectly conveys the relapse process and how crushing it can be to someone who so desperately wants to become better. Also like that film, The Outrun feels less interested in conveying a sob story for its audience but instead finding a perfect middle ground that is both empathetic towards Rona’s addiction but also straight-forward with how much it hurts those who care about her.

The approach of making the film a bit non-linear in its storytelling might not work for everyone, but I found it to be an impressive way to convey how much our past traumas impact our present and influence our decision making. Without even knowing it, we find deeply harmful ways to cope with the past before we realize they can become demons themselves. All of these incredibly heavy themes feel like they could become so depressing that The Outrun would be a slog to get through, but the film is incredibly gripping and never once dreary or artificial in its presentation. It simply floored me by its emotional heft and sincerity.

I don’t know if everyone who watches the film will be as deeply moved by the themes as I was, but I was really taken by The Outrun. In every way, I was floored by its depiction of addiction and what it means to live with it; both the terrifying lows of what it does to a person, but the beautiful clarity and self-acceptance that can arise when you come out the other side of it. Saoirse Ronan is one of our absolute best performers, and I think this is already one of her most impressive performances to date. All of this blends together to create one of the best depictions of addiction I think I’ve ever seen on film – it completely moved me to tears by the end.

4.5/5