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oh I LOVED this Carrie! I have not read the book, but I have plans to see the film next week. I hear all your criticisms without having read the book - I can already see them (if that makes sense). I do not love the messaging of individual conquest, does everything not exist within the context of the structure of our world? Have you seen the film - how does it differ?

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Thanks Martha! Funny you should ask… I did a mini review of the film on IG:

"THE OUTRUN" The Outrun is a beautiful movie. But all the gorgeousness of the windswept Orkney Islands can’t rescue its banal story line: young woman goes to the big city, descends into addiction, returns to the great north to get sober. Sure, recovery can be lonely. But The Outrun takes the main character’s isolation too literally. We catch glimpses of fleeting friendships formed on the London dancefloor, the Black boyfriend whose only role is to highlight the tragic existence of his wild white girlfriend. The movie is mostly mono-focused on Rona and her battles with alcoholism – a struggle portrayed as epic but ultimately solitary. Critics have applauded Saoirse Ronan for her dramatic performance of Rona (reviewers love an actor who knows how to play a good drunk). But the relentless repetitions of the main character’s ups and down make it hard to empathise with her. In the end, all that’s left is the stunningly stark landscape. The irony of all the hype surrounding The Outrun is that it will help edge the Orkneys towards overtourism, destroying the very natural beauty that the film exploits. My advice: skip the movie and read the book. Amy Liptrot’s original memoir is not free from clichés, but it does have some truly haunting moments.

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Hi Carrie, what a piece and those last lines... I gasped when I read "without any vision of the joys of collective struggle" - just Wow!

So much making sense of the world / life out there is over-psychological and indeed reading "like an empty promise"!

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Thanks for reading and commenting Nuno! This is part of a longer project in writing g about drugs and addiction, so it’s great to have feedback 🙏

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Wow! Sounds great and look forward to more instalments:) 🤩

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"The individual recovery story extracted from the wider world offers the wrong kind of fantasy: the notion that we can solve social problem solely through individual change." Such an apt statement! This individualistic approach is so prevalent in fiction as the means to tackle virtually every problem, regardless of social context, and, as you note further on, without reference, let alone depiction, of organizing collectively to address the actual causes of the problems the story characters face.

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Thanks Juliana. Your writing is really showing the way with how to tell collective stories! Beyond critiquing individualism I am moving towards doing something similar with nonfiction. Thanks for reading- and for your example!

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