In the slow, beating heart of the Orkney Islands, Saoirse Ronan’s Rona heads to the most isolated place she knows, home, in order to escape her alcoholic tendencies in an attempt to resuscitate her life. In the silence of her home, the ever-brilliant Ronan has time to reflect on her failed life in this coming-of-age drama.
The film opens with Rona at a nightclub in London. As the bar closes she is the last to leave. Swigging departed partier’s empties, the staff play along with the youthful, fun inebriate until she jumps up on the table and accidentally smashes glasses, falling to the floor in a drunken heap. As she gets up we are shown a point-of-view shot of the nighttime street, hazy and unfocused, we cannot help but feel lost. This provides a deeply empathetic lens through which the narrative unfolds.
Our ability to empathise with Rona is particularly important to the film due to its almost plotless and meandering nature. As she heads home the film is not short of time to show Rona reflecting on her life, using flashbacks to show her past alcoholic tendencies and her attempt to rectify her destructive lifestyle. This plotless narrative provides a quiet narrative and at times becomes a showcase for the Orkney islands (in a good way), often showing scenes of the coastline, displaying the beauty and peace of our world.
However, for some this slow burn will be a hard slog to outlast for the 118-minute runtime. Though the use of flashbacks and montage aim as a way to present reflection and a wider variation in time through a non-linear narrative, it leads to a dizzying and disorientating style that takes the audience out of the film rather than creates an added layer of empathy. Part of this struggle is that the moments of transition don’t act as resolutions the audience asks of the present Rona, but rather irritating interjections that take the audience away from Rona’s journey to sobriety. For this reason, particularly in the second act, the film struggles to maintain momentum and show Rona developing, instead showing repetitive cycles of struggle.
What keeps the audience engaged is a dazzling and beautiful portrayal of the pain and anguish of an alcoholic through Saoirse Ronan’s performance. Who juggles being an abusive alcoholic, an inquisitive biologist and a carer to her mentally ill father. It is a mesmerising and quietly tectonic performance of fearless ferocity. No matter how many mistakes Rona makes we cannot help but fall back in love with her, Ronan’s performance is an addiction in itself.
What makes particularly good use of her abilities is the use of voiceover throughout the film which acts to show Rona’s love of the Orkney Islands. Whilst the film makes it clear that she wants to go back to London and the urban lifestyle, it is through the sheer attention to detail Rona is able to go through the niches of Orkney that she is able to show her love. To steal a quote from one of Ronan’s other films Lady Bird, “Don't you think maybe they are the same thing? Love and attention?”. The film uses the unique weather of Orkney to show this love, Rona often makes statements on the wind of the crashing of waves. At one point she is seen almost conducting the weather in front of her, showing her connection to the islands and the importance of nature in her life.
The Outrun although very slow and meandering at times, is able to show the beauty of life through a brilliant performance by Saoirse Ronan who recovers from her alcoholic tendencies through her return to home comforts, with a gaze-like lens showing the beauty of life. Indeed, it is this newfound love for home that mends Rona in this love letter to the Orkney Islands.
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