You can’t help but admire the ambitious approach director Nora Fingscheidt has taken in adapting “The Outrun,” the best-selling, prize-winning 2016 memoir by Amy Liptrot. Co-penning the screenplay with Liptrot, whose struggles with alcoholism and attempts to recover after coming home to the Orkney islands of Scotland are the backbone of the film, Fingscheidt presents the story in three interwoven narratives. She jumps back and forth in time to moments good and bad, thrilling and confusing and cathartic and horrifying for the film’s main character. Artfully stitched together and, in part, a celebration of nature’s wonders, “The Outrun” — in theaters this week — is every bit the poetic film that Fingscheidt intended it to be. It also too often feels unnecessarily jarring, a movie that gives you whiplash as it moves so aggressively through a nonlinear path. That doesn’t change the fact that its star, Saoirse Ronan, gives an excellent performance as the alcoholic Rona. (Ronan also serves as one of the film’s producers, and she, Liptrot and Fingscheidt decided to eschew the use of Liprot’s name in the movie for “healthy distance and creative freedom,” as Fingscheidt says in her director’s statement. The trio instead borrowed the name of a small, uninhabited island.) As “The Outrun” begins, we are greeted with the calm island waters and lovely images of a young girl at an island’s edge, along with the voice of Rona, telling us that in Orkney, “it’s said the people who have drowned turn into seals; we call them ‘selkies.’ “At the highest tides, they slip off their seal skins for the night and come to the shores — beautiful people — and they dance together, naked in the moonlight,” she continues. “The selkies return to the sea at dawn, unless they’re seen by a person, and then they’re trapped in their human body and cannot return.” This is a pretty obvious metaphor for the struggling Rona, who later in the film will tell someone, “I can’t be happy sober.” As we will see, Rona is happiest knocking back drinks, whooping it up in London bars and clubs years earlier. These are fun nights. Until they aren’t. Her drinking and resulting behavior lead to issues professionally for the young woman with a degree in biology and personally, her actions spurring a split with boyfriend Daynin (Paapa Essiedu of “I May Destroy You”). Paapa Essiedu and Saoirse Ronan portray a couple in “The Outrun.” (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics) Her struggles lead to a return home to Orkney and time spent with her separated parents. She resents the passionate embrace of religion by her mother, Annie (Saskia Reeves, “Slow Horses”), while adoring her eccentric father, Andrew (Stephen Dillane, “Game of Thrones”), despite his suffering from what can be rather ugly “bipolar episodes.” Saoirse Ronan and Stephen Dillane portray daughter and father in “The Outrun.” (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics) This is not the only move Rona will make to, well, outrun her affliction. Hers is, understandably, a tale of ups and downs. 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Sporadic bits of narration are well-implemented, Rona sharing the difficulty of her condition — “The urge to drink can come out of nowhere; you think you’re doing well, suddenly you want nothing more than a drink” — and explaining alcoholism’s physical effects — “Through repeated use of the drug, our neural pathways are scarred so deeply they’ll never be repaired.” Ronan’s work is largely understated, the star of films including “Lady Bird” and “Atonement” saying a lot with only glances and facial expressions. To the credit of Fingscheidt — director of 2019’s acclaimed “System Crasher” and 2021’s not-so-well-received “The Unforgivable” — the requisite big and bombastic moments are few and far between, which makes them all the more affecting. (Ronan impresses in those, too.) Again, though, it’s simply difficult to feel like we are on Rona’s path with her as we move between what Fingscheidt describes in her aforementioned director’s statement as the character’s “Orkney” layer, her “here and now”; her “London” layer, characterized by dream-like memories; and her “Nerd” layer, where her scientific research becomes intermingled with childhood memories. It’s more engrossing to read about Fingscheidt’s approach than it is to experience it, which is a problem. Saoirse Ronan stars in “The Outrun.” (Courtesy of Sony Pictures Classics) Still, there is much to admire with “The Outrun,” which you can imagine inspiring some facing similar issues to attempt to change their lives, and there’s great value in that. It rings true when Rona speaks with a man who’s been sober for more than 10 years who tells her that it gets easier but never easy. Taking it one day at a time is the only option. Too bad it never remotely feels like that kind of journey for the viewer. ‘The Outrun’ Where: Theaters. When: Oct. 4. Rated: R for language and brief sexuality. Runtime: 1 hour, 58 minutes. Stars (of four): 2.5.