this year i want to watch movies that make me feel something.

an excuse to talk about Nora Fingscheidt’s "The Outrun"

I’m late to the party and I don’t even care. I’ve thought about Nora Fingscheidt’s The Outrun maybe every single day since I saw it on New Year’s day on a Delta airbus headed to the South of Chile. I can’t speak for the common man but I am always my best self on a plane. I wish I could be “Plane Me” all the time. 24/7. Disney 365.

First of all, you can bet if I get the window seat, I am not shutting that thing like some freak from the movie Wall-E. Look at the sky. It’s a marvel we’re up here and you want to shut the blind for what? To hammer home the cosplay that we’re sardines tinned in an ergonomic can right before being gobbled on somebody’s TikTok Live? Nah. I keep that thing tastefully open during daylight hours, take-off and descent.

Second thing about “plane me” that makes her superior to regular me is the likelihood that I pick up a new book. Studies show that 38% off all new reads begin during travel. Yeah okay that’s a fake statistic, I made that up. But doesn’t it feel true? Because it feels true to me.

One thing about human beings (and this is real so buckle up), is that if a task becomes even slightly more inconvenient than what we are accustomed to, the likelihood of us pivoting and simply doing something else increases. Johan Hari’s Stolen Focus mentions this when analyzing the roll “infinite scroll” plays in humans struggling with time management and moderation online. If you never reach the end of your timeline, you are never finished. If you are never “finished”, your brain struggles to find something else to do. You never get bored. Which is why, if connecting to in-flight Wifi requires more than one step, I tend to just tuck my phone away in that suspicious front-seat pocket that somehow is always littered with saltine crumbs.

Thirdly, I peruse in-flight entertainment as a real high-brow, culture connoisseur. I considering things I never would have dared try on for size in the comfort of my own home where I am always reaching for the most familiar thing. I’m on a plane! The world is my oyster! I should watch that documentary on Jane Fonda, Tiger Woods or Stanley Tucci eating zucchini in Italy! Suddenly I’m thinking, “I never did watch Labyrinth and that feels like a touchstone of puppet media I should have something to say about.” Which finally brings me to why on January 1st, 2025 I watched The Outrun.

You know The Outrun, that Saoirse Ronan movie from last year that kind of looks like a Lady Bird sequel if you squint at the poster? I remember flicking through interviews with Ronan about the project and feeling like “that must be really good” because Ronan is always good. But I avoided it. Why? I heard the word “addiction” and counted film out for being too emotionally spooky.

I’m an escapist, through and through. I skip the episodes of Friends where Ross and Rachel break up in season 3 because it’s too “real.” As if it’s me, stepping out on my long-term partner with the Xerox girl that says, “let’s Ross it!” But Plane Me is not concerned with things feeling too real. She respects art and life and the art of feeling everything in life. I hit play.

I imagine my brain is not too different from a river pebble tumbled in a rock polisher after all these years watching pastel-hued baking competitions. It’s shiny and smooth and it’s easy to forget it’s a rough thing that came from the earth. Watching The Outrun, I felt it rattle lightly like a number three on the richter scale.

On my six inch TV screen is where I met Rona (based on Amy Liptrot and played masterfully by Saoirse Ronan) who has just returned to her remote hometown on Scotland’s Orkney Islands. Rona is 100 days sober after having had her addiction slowly consume her once vibrant life in London. Her homecoming takes place during lambing season, having grown up on a farm. Meanwhile, Rona struggles to connect with her separated parents, feeling misunderstood under the eyes of her devout mother and on unstable ground with her dad. A biology grad-student dropout, the natural world and its lore becomes Rona’s co-conspirator in her life in Orkney.

The film is told non-linearly and gives us Rona’s addiction in fragments. When the film begins and we’re introduced to Rona’s Orkney, the islands are pale and desaturated while she her life in London appears to us in full color. The love story with her now ex-boyfriend, feels as vibrant as the nightlife that becomes Rona’s constant backdrop. You can feel Rona’s “aliveness” in the pulsing music and kaleidoscope quality of the scenic design, but as the film continues and Rona begins to face what happened in London and what her alcoholism cost her there, color starts to slowly drain from the city.

Bit by bit, Orkney begins to grow on us and presumably Rona, pricking with new saturation. There is a scene where our protagonist is forced to spend Christmas by herself in a small cottage on Papa Westray. Back at her cottage, all alone, she leaves all the lights on and—turning her music all the way up—creates a private dance party for one, flinging her limbs around the cottage, completely sober. The wide shot that follows, frames the electric glow from the house in astonishing contrast to the deep darkness of the wild isolation.

The most common criticism I’ve seen while hyperfixating on this film is that it’s too slow. Sentiment that usually goes something like, “you know what’s gonna happen and it takes too long to get there.”

I don’t know man, maybe I’m just an easy to please sort-of-someone who lovessssss female directors and earned character arcs but I was on the edge of my seat. What kind of addiction struggle would we be watching if the run time was sixty minutes? I was genuinely sat there in my airplane seat, oozing concern that Rona would simply never make headway with her healing. And I think a lot of folks who know and love addicts, feel that 97% of the time. It’s sometimes hazy and slow rhythm are effective and feel in step with Rona. Maybe some of these guys just need to go watch Ant Man again or something.

There are also vignettes throughout The Outrun that explore Rona’s relationship with the natural world. They’re all different from each other, sometimes done through animation, poetry, or multi-media and serve as a breather from some of the film’s heaviness. I’ve seen critics only say that the vignettes are unnecessary or too flowery — again, massively disagree.

These narrative breaks give us a clearer picture of Rona’s mind, which is important. As the viewer, we have complete access to Rona’s worst moments as well as her venomous tendencies when she’s in the throes of her addiction. Having these analytical beats are clarifying. When Rona is drinking, her curiosity for nature dulls, her sense of self flattens, and without the these vignettes we’d lose a lot of what makes her tick. We need to know what this woman knows. As we watch Rona deprioritize everything besides drinking, there is an essential purity to her folklorean knowledge of things like Orkney, or satellites, of tectonic plates and seals. Her voiceover almost a different character to the one we watch struggle on screen.

I’ve thought about The Outrun so much since I’ve seen it, I have been forced to face a simple fact: I think I’m ready to feel stuff. Listen, the news is dark. The world, is a scary place right now and what’s even scarier is maybe it was a scary place the whole time. Engaging with empathy, engaging with complexity that is humanity feels like some sort of essential work. Don’t misunderstand me, last night I watched two hours of Love Island: All Stars, I contain multitudes. But also dismissing non-escapist stories leaves us (okay, me ) without a safe way to engage with life’s jagged edges. If I’m only watching what is fed to me via my algorithm and rewatches, maybe I’m only exploring the parts of myself I’m comfortable with. And I don’t know if I particularly like that.

When I used to watch movies as a child, I had a whole lot less say in the matter. Didn’t we all? And it wasn’t always comfy, I know anybody who saw The Secret of Nimh before the age of ten probably felt the same. But to be fair was there a “good” way to learn about animal testing?

Fiction is necessary for health minds, it is something that cannot be overstated. Being reminded that there is darkness does not mean that the world is dark. Sometimes, experiencing it in fiction, better prepares us for when we see it in our communities and in our headlines.

Not that a striking film about addiction and a very small Scottish island is the same thing as fascism, because of course it is not. But I think in some strange way the lesson is that burying my own head in the sand will not make the world less painful, just lessen my comfortability with engaging with it. Stories of all kinds need an audience. Fiction and non-fiction. Yes, maybe my heart rate will increase, maybe I’lll flinch, maybe I’ll worry about what happens to Rona when she gets into that car.

But thank goodness, I’m paying attention.