How An Alcoholic Asshole Made Me Cry

FILMS MATTER –

Nov. 7, 2024 – About one hour into The Outrun, I realized that I was watching one of the best movies I’ve ever seen.

It was when Rona (Saoirse Ronan, who deserves all the awards) was being tucked into bed by her mother Annie (Saskia Reeves) after relapsing into alcoholism. While drunk, Rona berates her mother for her strong Christian faith.

“You know he’s made up,” she says drunkenly as she rips Christian imagery off the wall. But as she falls into bed, Rona looks at her mother and says, “All that praying didn’t help me, did it?”

That was the first time I cried while watching this movie. So many family dramas are about what the family did to the protagonist, and the protagonist returns to unleash righteous fury on the people they think wronged them. But Rona is the asshole here, and she’s an asshole because she can’t stop hurting herself. She wishes those prayers could help her.

The Outrun takes place in Orkney, a set of islands just north of Scotland. Rona comes back home after ten years in London, where she developed alcoholism. After being attacked one night while drunkenly stumbling home, Rona enters a rehab program and returns home to stay with her mother and bipolar/schizophrenic father, who are separated.