“The Outrun” composers Jan Miserre (L) and John Gürtler (R)
As the English poet John Donne wrote in 1624, “No man is an Illand.” But as the Scottish author Amy Liptrot showed in her 2016 memoir “The Outrun,” the barren beauty of her home on the Orkney islands that “Rona” returns to after catastrophic alcohol addiction in London is certainly a notable place to lose and find oneself. Now adapted by German filmmaker Nora Fingscheidt, Liptrot’s gradual recovery (as remarkably embodied by Saoirse Ronan) provides a transfixing experience that blends sardonic documentary-like narration, animation and an escape into Scottish myth of human-transforming seals and world-encircling dragons – all of which become metaphors for a woman who gradually gets the alcohol monkey off her back in a place where there’s nowhere left to run but into herself.
Musically capturing Rona’s inner journey while contrasting the gorgeous nature around her with the hypnotic house beats of her damaging partying in way more metropolitan surroundings is a pensive score by the team of Englishman John Gürtler and German-born composer Jan Miserre. With both men born in 1981, Gürtler spent most of his professional music life in Berlin, where he’d score Fingscheidt acclaimed 2019 “System Crasher” about an out of control 9-year-old. His music was heard on Netflix via “Dig Deeper” and “A Pure Place.” The latter film set on a cultist-filled Greek island marked one of many collaborations with Miserre among soundtracks for “Veins of the World.,” “Space Dogs” and “A Mouthful of Air.” But it’s with Ronan’s very good chance of an “Outrun” Oscar nomination for the kind of risk-taking performance that voters love for good reason (especially given how well she demolishes her Irish sweetheart persona) that Gürtler and Miserre will be getting their biggest exposure yet for capturing a lyricism of purposeful loneliness.
“The Outrun” is the kind of alt. score that takes risks while being at the height of subtlety until the orchestral waves of its knockout conducting climax rise to the forefront. Capturing the lure of undersea “selkies” and soulful isolation with a deft combination of sampling, electronics, orchestra and ethnic instruments, “The Outrun’s” score hypnotically drifts with this unique approach to the addiction genre – not that Fingscheidt shies away from the violent self-punishment that Rona inflicts on herself and her loved ones. Hearing the siren call of booze-filled trip-hop partying that washes against the sound of craggy seashores and mist-covered landscapes, Gürtler and Miserre’s potently subtle blend of ancient, modern classical and beat-driven styles make for a fresh sound in the growing field of alt. artists bringing a new film music approach to playing young characters desperately in search of themselves. In the case of “The Outrun,” it’s an unlikely place for a party girl to find peace with herself – a tide between poetry and abuse that makes for the composer’s beautifully pensive, and ultimately greatly moving thematic musical fusion.
Tell us about your entries into music, and how you began collaborating
John: Jan and I met at the Berlin University of the Arts, where he was studying jazz piano and I was studying saxophone. Back then, we had quite different approaches to music, and long before we started creating together, we just hung out as friends. I began scoring films and producing in 2005, and by the time I received my film music diploma in 2011, Jan had his grand piano in my studio space in Berlin. It was there that I realized Jan had a natural talent for recording, arranging, and producing, so I asked him to join me as a co-composer for “Battle of the Queens,” for which we created a Bolero-like score with traditional Swiss instruments and performers. Since Jan is a prolific live pianist and keyboard player, we’ve been working on scores on and off whenever his schedule allows it.
Jan: My father is a jazz saxophonist, so music has been a part of my life from an early age. I started playing piano at age four and picked up drums when I was fifteen. I later moved to Berlin to study jazz piano, which is where I met John—we were in the same class. We spent a lot of time together, talking about music and life, and when I needed a space for my grand piano, his studio was the obvious choice. That’s when we realized how much we enjoyed creating music together, each of us complementing the other’s strengths. We still love the entire creative process of exploring new ways to express emotion through music.
John, you originally hailed from London and went to Berlin with a whole lot of world-wide stops in between. Now you’re basically back in England for this movie. Tell us about that experience, and what you think musically the biggest difference is between these locations?
John: It was wonderful to return to the UK for this film. Even though we produced it in Berlin, there’s something about the language and humor that I really enjoy. Music is such a borderless medium that we always try to find what best serves each individual project. In that respect, I don’t think our approach differed based on location, apart from the fact that we had the opportunity to experiment with traditional Scottish instruments. We’re especially happy that Decca UK has released the soundtrack and we’re very much looking forward to the vinyl release, which will be on January 10th of next year.
When you got the gig to score “The Outrun,” did you read Amy Liptrot’s original memoir?
J & J: Yes, that was the very first thing we did, about a year before shooting started. The book and working on the project as a whole had a profound effect on us. We cherish the chance to get an early start and let ideas grow for as long as possible before the deadline.
What were your musical inspirations here?
J & J: One significant influence in terms of electronic music is Aphex Twin, so for the London side of the story, I had a lot of music from the Warp label in the back of my mind. The portrayal of nature and the Orkney Islands drew inspiration from composers like Ravel, John Adams, and Georg Friedrich Haas.
If you knew anyone who’s dealt with addiction, how did that influence your approach?
J & J: Like most people, I’ve known individuals with substance abuse issues, and I’ve had my own personal experiences with alcohol. As with any subject matter, these experiences inform how I approach composing for a film. A huge part of it is feeling empathy for what the characters in a given project are going through. Even if the experience is far removed from your own, you must find a way to go deep, to conjure some authentic feeling from which the music can arise.
From L to R Nora Fingsheidt, Saskia Reeves and Saoirse Ronan
Tell us about your continuing work with filmmaker Nora Fingsheidt on “The Outrun.” And was there anything different about your collaborative process here?
J & J: Compared to our previous project, “System Crasher,” the biggest difference was the scale of *The Outrun*. “System Crasher” had an experimental electro-acoustic score, produced with a small budget. We had never worked with traditional film instrumentation before, but this time Nora practically wrote an orchestra into the script, and that defined our path. Apart from that, our process remained the same: start as early as possible, be as open as possible, support the shoot by pre-producing tracks, and support the shape of the edit through a dialogue of experimentation during the editing process.
What did you musically find interesting about the film’s setting on the Orkney islands? How did you want to capture the Scottish identity of these bleakly beautiful Scottish islands, as well as their interplay with the surrounding, wave swept Atlantic Ocean?
J & J: While it was clear this was not a traditional Scottish tale that demanded traditional music, there are elements of folklore and fantasy in the film that we felt needed some Scottish musical texture. We found the perfect performer in Malin Lewis and spent three days in our studio recording their self-sewn bagpipes, mouth harp, flutes, and fiddle, even before knowing exactly where and when the music would appear in the film.
How musically different did you want to make the “documentary” scenes of Rona explaining facts?
J & J: One of the first tracks we wrote before filming was titled “Rona Childhood.” I had imagined Rona running around the fields of her parents’ farm. This energy, paired with our recordings of traditional instruments, worked well for the lighter scenes in the film, such as when Rona is talking to the locals about changing their mowing patterns to save the rare Corncrake bird, or when she helps organize the Isle of Papay art festival, Gyro Nights. Many of these scenes were shot with actual locals with no acting experience, and the music helps bring out a certain rugged authenticity and humor.
Tell us about the more fairy tale aspects of the score with the seal “Selkies” and an animated dragon?
J & J: The selkie is a shape-shifting creature, a seal that can shed its skin, become human, and dance on the shore. There’s a myth about a farmer stealing a selkie’s skin, forcing the seal to remain trapped in a human’s body. The elements that influenced the score here are nature, its raw power, and the alienation from both nature and oneself. Rona’s themes have a searching, mystical quality, for which we used the Ondes Martenot and the Cristal Baschet. Both instruments have a vocal quality that we used to mirror the call of a seal, as well as an unsteadiness of pitch that evokes natural sounds.
There’s a dream-like atmosphere to “The Outrun” that essentially plays inside of Rona’s head. How did you want to a meditative feeling for a woman who goes into full-on alcoholic fury?
J & J: The dream-like atmosphere stems from the imagined elements of the story, particularly Rona’s fascination with myths, science, and the cosmos, which play a huge part in the book. Much of the music we wrote before shooting captures this fascination and lust for knowledge and life. The meditative quality evokes the feeling of a blurred childhood memory or the sensation of reconnecting with nature.
What do you think the kind of wide-open isolation that Rona goes through does to any person? Do you think it can inspire or depress creativity?
J & J: I believe that given time to recover and heal, if we succeed in opening ourselves to our surroundings and simply being—without burdening ourselves with too many negative past experiences—we can reinvent who we are, shedding the stories we’ve been told or have been telling ourselves our whole lives. The trick is to break out of repetitive patterns, and that’s the purpose of Rona’s escape from London. Creativity can definitely be inspired by a lack of distractions.
How did you want to contrast your more meditative scoring with the beat of Rona’s house music, which signifies her old alcoholic life, and merge those musical contrast?
J & J: We drew parallels between positive experiences, like being high on life after a night out clubbing in London, and being sober while bathing in the cold sea, surrounded by seals. The music wasn’t created to judge these experiences but to express them. Two of the major electronic tracks were produced with UK producer Ed Davenport (aka Inland) because we wanted to deeply integrate this part of Rona into the score. Both club tracks transition fluidly into the love theme, as we were able to control harmony, tempo, and pitch. While there’s a strong contrast between the acoustic and electronic elements of the score, they are closely connected, both being part of Rona’s experience.
Talk about musically capturing both the gleeful escape, and emotional damage that Ronna finds in alcohol
J & J: We pre-produced some of the club tracks for the shoot, as Nora was looking for a feeling of ecstasy and release in the music, and she knew the creative potential of combining these tracks with the rest of the original score. It was great to hear how the use of the tracks influenced the performances and the dancing extras. The music depicting the emotional damage inflicted by alcohol was created later. Once we had found our Rona theme, we could bend it to match her state of mind, even to a point of unrecognizability. There’s a moment when Rona succumbs to addiction, lying on the floor of her dirty apartment. Her theme here, “Cravings,” is dragged out and distorted, as we imagined her trapped at the bottom of a giant glass bottle, with solitary drops echoing in her mind.
At times, the mood gets downright eerie to the point where you think this might become a folk horror movie, particulary when Rona looks long and hard at the rocks which transition her back to England. Talk about that scene.
J & J: For the scene “The Ring of Brodgar,” Rona gets lost in a memory or fantasy of Daynin, fueled by a longing for the intensity of her former life, only to recall a horrible memory of her time in London. The night sounds at the ancient stone circle intensify, transitioning into a slow club track. Then, as she falls into Daynin’s arms, the love theme takes over, blending into a memory of Rona losing control at a posh club.
“The Outrun” has an interesting structure that not only plays with time, but also resets itself when Rona falls off the wagon. How did that affect the score?
J & J: Rona’s main theme guides us throughout the film. It reflects her heroine’s journey and her state of mind, place, and body. Once she relapses, we hear a darker version of the love theme, “Tides of Surrender,” used for her and Daynin, this time reflecting her pain and empathy for a suffering so hard to break from. After her relapse, the score withdraws, leaving more room for natural sounds and silence, gradually reappearing and intensifying with more acoustic instrumentation during Rona’s healing process.
Tell us about the instrumentation of the score, and how you wanted to integrate traditional orchestral instruments with alt. electronics. What were the sessions lik
J & J: Electronic sounds influenced the acoustic ones, and vice versa. In “The Tremors,” the flutes and harps play phrases that mimic echo effects, but they are all natural recordings. Drones were derived from field recordings on set and transformed into musical textures. Sound designer Jonathan Schorr placed bottles with varying amounts of water on the edge of a windy cliff, and that field became part of the composition, informing the harmonic root tone of the track. The Ondes Martenot, one of the oldest electronic instruments (1928), uses three speakers simultaneously to create a three-dimensional acoustic sound. Its ability to continuously bend notes allowed us to write fluid, otherworldly themes not achievable on traditional acoustic instruments. The Cristal Baschet, made of glass and water, matched Rona’s addiction and her transcendent aspirations. This instrument uses sheets of metal to amplify sound, and when played in a certain way, it mimics distortion from an amplifier. All the acoustic sounds we used had electronic counterparts, and we’re obsessed with blending these two worlds to create a unified sound where the line between electronic and acoustic is blurred.
Tell us about finding a balance of motifs and melody within an ambient approach?
J & J: The ambient, meditative, and drone elements of the score closely resemble a physical or mental state. We can feel them before we hear them. Used subtly, they let us see through a character’s eyes. They also allow stronger emotions and experiences to emerge, with melodies and harmonies rising from within a musical texture. While there are strong themes for Rona’s journey, her love story, and the worlds of the Orkney Islands, the score also relies on subtle musical textures to hint at Rona’s physical and mental state.
I was really impressed with the end montage of Rona conducting a concert of sorts to her hopeful recovery. Tell us about the journey to reach the triumphant feeling of “The Long Way Home?”
J & J: Thank you! Nora wrote this cue into the script to visualize Rona’s recovery and hopefulness. We knew we’d need this piece before the shoot, so the journey from the first draft to the final version was a long one. While working on this, we were also developing the club track. Nora wanted the same ecstatic feel from dancing in a club to be present in the final scene of conducting the weather on the cliff. So, we used elements from the club track in the orchestral piece and vice versa, subtly connecting the two experiences. Saoirse Ronan had conducting lessons with Rob Ames from LCO, so we created a mock-up and a score they could work with. It was played in clubs, street corners, and on cliffs throughout the shoot for Saoirse to work with, guiding the visual material they created for the final montage.
What do you think makes “The Outrun” different from other addiction movies we’ve seen, as well their soundtracks?
J & J: Being autobiographical and tied to such a specific location, what sets this film apart is the authenticity of the Orkney Islands and the locals who helped make the film, both in front of and behind the camera. The story is less linear than most and feels like what it is meant to be: a glimpse into someone’s actual life, struggling with identity, addiction, and purpose. I appreciate that there’s no big dramatic or definitive ending to the story, and I hope many will relate to it. As for the score, we generally avoid conventional instrumentation, so even though we use a full classical orchestra towards the end, we believe the score has a specific sound that reflects Rona’s internal and external experiences.
How do you think alternative composers, and filmmakers are shaping the face of movie scoring?
J & J: The field of movie scoring and the world of musical sound design, which lies between music and sound, is still being reinvented and rediscovered. I think filmmakers are now much more aware of the creative and dramaturgical possibilities of music and sound than even a decade ago. I hope to be part of future projects that support and demand strong and unconventional approaches to composing for film.
See “The Outrun” in theaters now, with John and Jan’s soundtrack available on Decca Records HERE
Special thanks to Christian-Gabriel Endicio at White Bear PR
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