A transcendent Saoirse Ronan sheds light on the true addiction drama “The Outrun”

At some point during The Outrun it occurred to me that watching Saoirse Ronan act is a bit like looking through a magnifying glass: everything somehow feels a little clearer, sharper, more precise.

This unique actress delivers one of her best performances in a two-hour study of addiction that is poignant, sometimes beautiful, but always painful to watch – and would probably be too taxing without the luminous presence at its core. Would it even work if Ronan, who is also making her debut as a producer here, wasn’t on screen practically every second?

Luckily, we don’t have to imagine that. Ronan, who plays a 29-year-old biology student named Rona (the name comes from a tiny island off Scotland), serves as both star and narrator, narrating the sometimes poetic words of Amy Liptrot’s addiction memoir. The script, adapted by Liptrot and director Nora Fingscheidt, makes frequent use of fantasy and whimsy, even crossing over into animation. Some may find these deviations a distraction from the plot, but they are often fascinating.

Plus, the plot here is a loosely defined thing. We jump back and forth in time so often that sometimes only the changing color of Rona’s hair shows where we are on the timeline. It takes a while to get used to it, but the uncertainty starts to make sense. In a sense, we are in Rona’s mind and experience the phases and beginnings of her journey. And recovery is hardly a linear process.

There’s a good supporting cast, but the real second star is nature itself. The film is set primarily in the Orkney Islands off Scotland, a windswept landscape that can be both punishing and restorative. It can also be breathtaking, especially the sea. And by the sea we begin, for we learn that in Orkney lore someone who drowns turns into a seal, but returns to land at night in human form and dances until dawn.

We see a seal underwater, and then we see Ronan himself dancing – bathed in red light on a dance floor – and then falling down, blind drunk.

After this flashback, we learn that Rona has returned to her parents’ home for an extended visit after spending a decade in London, where addiction took hold and ruined her relationships – especially with her thoughtful boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu), who as she had success had disintegrated.

From the nightlife in Hackney, London, to a sheep farm in Scotland, where our days of sobriety are ticked off – 30, 90, 117. The challenges here are different. Rona’s father Andrew (Stephen Dillane) is loving but suffers from bipolar episodes. Due to his debilitating illness, he lives separated from his wife Annie (Saskia Reeves), who has turned to religion to cope with the illness – and it is the only solution she can offer Rona.

Deeply lonely and always on the brink of relapse, Rona sees a ray of hope in the darkness when she volunteers with the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and is assigned to survey the Orkney Islands for the disappearing corncrake. This bird needs help to survive and soon it appears to represent Rona herself.

But Rona’s problems haunt her no matter how deep into the countryside she ventures. As she tells other addicts in a devastating flashback from her alcohol recovery group, what she misses most is how good alcohol made her feel. At another point, she tells someone that she’ll never be happy when she’s sober – and you believe her. In another harrowing scene, she cries out to her mother after a relapse: “All that praying didn’t help me, Mom!”

Finally, with the aim of getting even further from civilization than the Orkney mainland, Rona heads to the tiny island of Papay – an island, she notes, that is off an island, off another island, off another island, and off another lies. Here, during a brutal winter in a tiny bird keeper’s house where she interacts only with the town’s sparse population, Rona begins to heal. (Liptrot spent two winters here and wrote her memoirs.)

Perhaps Ronan’s most impressive achievement is how she so clearly describes the stages of Rona’s journey – right down to the physical movement when drunk, first a little, then heavily (she worked with the talented choreographer Wayne McGregor) and how to physically changed during recovery.

And then there is her face. We see a transparent quality in this as Rona begins to embrace nature – her own and that around her – and look towards a new future. A future that might even include laughter.

“The Outrun,” a Sony Pictures Classics release, is rated “R” by the Motion Picture Association for “Language and Brief Sexuality.” Running time: 118 minutes. Three out of four stars.