“I can’t be happy sober”
The Outrun is an intelligent piece of cinema that will evoke some emotions for sure: disgust, endless empathy, confusion, love, hate, chaos, peace. Most likely, the first half of it will make you feel uncomfortable and emotionally sick. You’ll want to turn it off and do something fun instead – anything from talking to your family members or friends to taking a walk in the storm – anything to avoid watching Rona in the state that she is in. But it’s an important watch and it makes you feel, above all, grateful. If you’re somehow connected to this issue (either your friend, family member, or you have suffered from addiction), it will make you want to spend even more time with your loved ones – sober.
The non-linear structure really helps with that submergence into the highs and lows of alcohol intoxication. At night, the fuzzy euphoria, the brilliant nothingness of life, the peaceful weightlessness of your body, as you’re moving through space, surrounded by light and sound. And the contrast of the morning-after with their almost deafening silence, the hurricane in your head, the daylight making you feel out of place, as if the bar is the only place you belong to.
This film will be especially hard on two groups: those who are suffering or have suffered from addiction, and those who loved someone suffering from it. And those who won’t empathize with Rona will, for sure, empathize with Daynin. Daynin shows remarkable strength in staying with the woman he loves, seeing her through this pain again and again, and watching her fail every time, hoping things will get better. But they never do, and Daynin, understandably, chooses his own happiness over the unhealthy and, frankly, physically dangerous relationship they had developed.
Rona’s family drama (her father’s bipolar disorder and her mother’s overexcessive – at least in Rona’s opinion – religious antics) serves as a good foundation to at least partially explain her problem, but it doesn’t take the attention away from Rona herself.
It shows a very believable progression, too: the day 1 to 60 with its anxiety attacks, breathing in and breathing out, the starting over after brief relapse, a need for an obsession to disrupt the addiction cycle, the repetitions of scientific facts one after the other as a tool of distraction again. She finds a new passion, and this time, it is to protect those without a voice or rights. Unlike the rehab that she entered because Daynin had left her, the healing on the island works because she’s doing it for herself and not somebody else.
The brutal “You wanna go for a drink?” moment after Rona has just been assaulted by a stranger and has gotten out of the hospital is heartbreaking. This is the time we learn just how much of a problem she has and how unaware she is of it.
There are many things the viewer can connect with when watching Rona trying to navigate her life without addiction. I, for instance, could see myself in her so clearly when she faced her struggles all alone, isolating herself in a house on an actual island, far away from home, family, and friends, trying to find some meaning in her life. That avoidant behavior, not knowing when or how to ask for help, and most importantly, thinking she HAS to face it all alone, is what makes it all exceptionally relatable.
You realize she’s gonna make it as the screen presents the montage of her watching television on a Christmas Eve, eating in bed, dancing alone in a room – doing everything to distract herself from thoughts of her only friend, the substance that she used to think could cure anything – but not anymore.
One of the last scenes in the film, as Rona finds peace in an unexpected place, connecting to nature entirely, conducting the waves like music, is the moment of bliss she has missed so much – turns out you can find happiness outside the bar. The ending is genius: the corncrake call followed by Rona’s laughter – she’s finally found what she wanted both at her work and her life.
It’s just one day at a time, indeed, one day at a time.
