Saoirse Ronan’s new film The Outrun is a painful, hopeful story of addiction and recovery based on a powerful true story

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In “The Outrun,” everyone tries to lose themselves in something bigger than themselves. For Rona, played by Saoirse Ronan, it’s alcohol, at least at first. For her mother it is Christianity, and for her father, who fluctuates between episodes of mania and depression, it is sheep farming, becoming part of the ecosystem of the remote Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland.

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The film is based on journalist and author Amy Liptrot’s 2016 memoir of the same name and follows Rona as she returns home to the Orkney Islands after completing an alcoholic rehabilitation program in London. After a difficult reunion with her well-meaning but emotionally distant parents, Rona decides to take a job with a bird rescue organization before traveling further afield for a stay on Papa Westray, one of Orkney’s northern islands. Instead of getting lost in a bottle of vodka, Rona wants to lose herself in the wild waters of the North Atlantic.

The narrative dances between the present on the invigorating Scottish coast and flashbacks to dirty Hackney bars, where Rona is found collapsed on the bathroom floor as often as on the dance floor, evoking the way painful memories often resurface by chance. We watch as her addiction causes damage, sometimes irreparable, to herself, her graduate studies in biology, and her relationship with her boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu). It’s not an easy watch.

Loneliness and superstition

Some of the film’s most painful moments include its exploration of what it means to be feared or pitied by loved ones – the burden of feeling like a burden, whether justified or not, and the burden that can be felt on both family and family level entails romantic relationships. “All that praying didn’t help,” Rona tells her mother in one scene while drunk. “It didn’t help me.”

While praying may not have helped her mother Rona, time, solitude and the stark, beautiful landscapes of the Orkney Islands are what is helping her – or at least starting to. The path to recovery is not a straight or linear one, which “The Outrun” recognizes in its narrative structure and even Rona’s movements throughout the film. She hops between islands and even dashes off a ferry back to the mainland at the last minute when the prospect of returning to London becomes too overwhelming. The film is also interspersed with facts and images about the history and legends of the Orkney Islands – it is a place deeply rooted in mythology, from selkies to other superstitions.

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Holed up in a plain cottage on Papa Westray, Rona has only the techno music in her headphones and the sound of the waves crashing on the shore for company. She slowly begins to heal, although at first she has a desperate need for connection: early in the film, she asks a stranger for help to shield her cigarette from the wind as she lights it, her hands resting on his, much to his discomfort . She later uses the Internet to track the International Space Station as it orbits Earth, watching it from her window and shedding a tear as it flies over Orkney. The Outrun characters initially orbit each other at a distance, but this distance is necessary for Rona to heal—both herself and her strained relationship with her mother. She must make peace with herself in order to make peace with others.

“The Outrun” recognizes that we all want to lose ourselves in something bigger than the small, sad worlds we live in alone, be it the ocean or the bottom of a bottle, but the film lets us know that there is something bigger and there are more hopeful worlds out there waiting for us too. In Orkney tradition, Rona tells us, there is the idea that finding something when the water is low makes it yours. At the end of the film it becomes clear that Rona finds the beginning of hope.

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“The Outrun” is in theaters now. For more information on what to watch, check out the rest of our Big Screen Spotlight series.