The beauty of nature in The Outrun (2024)

The Outrun (2024) directed by Nora Fingscheidt from a screenplay she co-wrote with Amy Liptrot, and a story the two co-wrote with Daisy Lewis, based on the 2016 memoir of the same name by Liptrot, cinematography by Yunus Roy Imer, starring Saoirse Ronan.

This film is a roller coaster, it takes us through different moments and emotions and even genres of films, it is delicate and respectful in its way of showing us the life of this messy contradictory beautiful complex woman without losing our attention once, through stunning cinematography and great acting, the lack of dialogue or action is never a fault.

This is exactly how I’d imagine an island of Scotland to be like. Isolated and calm and lonely and windy and green. The sceneries reminded me a lot of The Banshees of Inisherin - I know that’s Ireland. Everything feels untouched and almost sheltered like a collective secret not yet ready to be revealed.

In Endless sunshine of the spotless mind, Clementine changes her hair exactly four times, and each time represents a different stage in her relationship to Joel. In other words, through dying her hair she tells us something, she’s saying that she is never the same because of the way her life experiences have changed her and her hair, and thank’s to this tool her journey becomes more transparent and visible to us.

I’ve always loved changing my hair color, and I’m almost surprised when I meet people who’ve never touched their hair, like it’s weird to me to have undyed never-before-bleached healthy natural long hair. But I guess it’s a symbol of firmness, of being okay with exactly who your are since birth, of having solid truths to hold on to, whereas my constant need for change is probably a cooping mechanism to coexist with uncertainty, with not having yet all the answers.

Here, hair colour as a storytelling tool is very powerful cause it shows you how the continuous change of pace that urban life puts you through has a visible impact on the life of our protagonist. Her London life is hectic, hence why she’s constantly changing her appearance, metamorphosing into what she thinks people want her to be: fun. It’s almost a way to keep up with the rhythm of her life on land. Whereas the solitude and silence and naturalistic views that represent her life on the island and her upbringing, so much less chaotic and frantic, allow her to grow back her natural hair, and eventually get rid of even the last bits of colour. 

Hair could even be a metaphor for alcohol, in the way it brought colour into her life, but then destroyed so she had to leave it behind and go back to her natural hair.

Overall, I’m obsessed with Saoirse and I loved this film, even though at times I thought maybe the editing was a bit too present, we kept being transported in different times in unchronological order and I would have enjoyed a bit more time with the character a moment at a time.