Bronx-born, Dublin-raised actor Saoirse Ronan has returned to her native city this month to present not one, but two remarkable films that burnish her status as the leading Irish screen actor of her generation. She plays leads in both Nora Fingscheidt's “The Outrun,” a frenetic character study of addiction and recovery, and in the 2024 New York Film Festival's closing night feature, “Blitz,” Steve McQueen’s dramatic reimagining of London in World War II, enduring the Luftwaffe’s aerial bombardment and destruction. In the latter film, Ronan plays a distraught single mother looking for her missing child in the rubble, amid an ensemble cast that includes Kathy Burke, Paul Weller and impressive newcomer Elliott Heffernan, as her son.
Ronan impressed not just on the big screen last Tuesday at the 92NY (92ny.org), but also when she was interviewed by moderator Annette Insdorf after the showing of "The Outrun," which was attended by the Echo.
In “The Outrun,” first-time producer Ronan carries the film, playing the central character in a fraught narrative of alcoholism and the struggle to conquer it, to ultimately find healing in nature, community and family. The film’s title refers, in island dialect, to a coastal field on a sheep farm that is used seasonally for grazing. But it does double-duty for the struggle by Saoirse’s character, postgrad student, Rona, to keep one step ahead of the siren call of alcohol and the rave lifestyle that lost her everything she values. The story is told in elliptical flashbacks, showing her initially fun life in London, escaping the rural boredom of her native Orkney Islands. She has good friends, a devoted beau (Paapa Essiedu), and a research job at a lab that funds her doctoral studies. But she also has a wild party lifestyle fuelled by booze, and soon the allure of alcohol proves stronger than Rona's will to resist it. And when she loses her job and her love, and soon hits rock-bottom, she retreats to her native Orkneys to distance herself from hedonistic temptation and recuperate.
The rugged Eden of the islands, shown in spectacular aerial scenery of dark granite cliffs battered by 30-foot high waves, is freighted with its own problems for Rona. Her bipolar father (Stephen Dillane) has mental health issues that have worsened since she left home, and her mother (Saskia Reeves) has taken ever deeper refuge in evangelical prayer groups that hold no meaning for her daughter. She realizes that her path to recovery must take her to ever more remote locations, to finally spend a winter alone on the inhospitable island of Papa Westray - a rocky outcrop at the northern fringe of the Orkneys that makes her home island seem positively balmy. There she finds support from the local community, and learns that the recovery process never gets easy, but becomes, instead, less hard.
Saoirse Ronan turned 30 this year and in a career spanning more than two decades has soared in more than two dozen feature films from child ingénue to formidable lead actor. The first of her three Oscar nominations was earned 17 years ago, in Joe Wright’s “Atonement.” Further nominations followed in 2015, for her lead role in John Crowley’s “Brooklyn,” and in 2017 for Greta Gerwig's “Ladybird.” Her raw, fearless performance in “The Outrun” might just be the role to persuade the Academy to give her the gong this time.
“The Outrun” will play for a limited time at AMC theaters at Kips Bay and Times Square and at The Regal in Union Square.
