THE END WE START FROM - Mark Reviews Movies

The End We Start From, Republic Pictures

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Review by Mark Dujsik | December 7, 2023

The rain starts, and it doesn't relent. That's the disaster around which The End We Start From revolves, as Great Britain—and perhaps some other places, too—floods to the point that London, as well as other low-lying cities and towns and villages, needs to be evacuated, leaving countless people displaced and the country's infrastructure under a lot of duress.

Nobody says much of anything about how or why this disaster strikes, and if one of the stops along the protagonist's cross-country journey is any indication, that silence and denial are part of the point of director Mahalia Belo's debut feature. We can guess it has to do with climate change, because similar effects have been and continue to be seen around the world, and it's only going to become worse as time progresses and inaction endures.

There are some striking images and familiar moments in Alice Birch's screenplay, adapted from the novel by Megan Hunter, but one constant refrain feels like another key point to take away from this authentically ambling portrait of survival. It comes from the lead character, an unnamed woman played by Jodie Comer, who starts the process of giving birth to her first child just as the rains begin and the streets of London become overwhelmed by the downpour. This specific situation is no world into which to bring a child, but it has happened anyway. The only thing the new mother can do is say one thing: "Sorry."

This woman does it a lot—whenever the baby cries, whenever she has difficulty producing breast milk, whenever she has to move away or run from an apparent place of shelter, whenever the walking to or waiting for the part of the trek goes on too long. Just like moving forward, apologizing is all the mother can do. Is it enough? Could it ever be?

In other words, there's an air of mourning to this movie that carries it from one point to the next and gives the material a bit more heft than its straightforward and predictable nature might suggest. It isn't quite enough to compensate for how little else the movie has to say, apart from the obvious about the challenges and perils of a collapsed society and humanity's nature under such circumstances. The tone, though, does make it feel as if Birch and Belo are reaching for something deeper, but without the characters or the plot beats to grab that something, we're left mostly with the feeling.

It is something, though—and something that a lot of filmmakers might not even attempt, with the temptation of spectacle so tantalizingly close. There's not much of that spectacle here, apart from some imagery near the end and those early scenes in London, as the woman helplessly watches as her home gradually floods and she's stuck in standstill traffic on the road out of town with her newborn son and husband/partner.

He's a man referred to in the credits as R (Joel Fry), and he's a fascinating character within the context of this particular story, giving the couple's relationship a distinct—if too briefly explored—dynamic here. This is a guy who simply does not do well under specific types of pressure, especially after experiencing plenty of trauma when a trip to the safety of his childhood home with his parents (played by Mark Strong and Nina Sosanya) goes terribly wrong. The Woman has to compensate for that, which she does out of necessity and love for this man, who helped her emotionally when she needed it the most.

How long can this last, though, within this kind of situation? Unfortunately, the movie doesn't keep R around long enough to explore that question. His sudden absence from the story, appearing only as visions and in flashbacks to show the Woman's devotion to him and how they met, sends the remainder of the plot on a fairly routine path.

She's first at a shelter with her baby, as residents' tempers flare over little inconveniences and a desperate group of armed men puts an end to that safe place. She hits the road north with a fellow new mother, called O (Katherine Waterston, very good, particularly in the last stretch of the character's own journey) in the credits, who has heard of a commune on a small island off the coast and thinks it would be the safest option for the quartet. Along the way, the Woman meets other people trying to survive, such as a man (played by Benedict Cumberbatch) who can't forget his missing family and a woman (played by Gina McKee) who only wants to forget everything that has happened.

That's essentially what this grounded story comes down to: a debate between forgetting—or not paying attention to possible, likely, or present doom at all—and remembering. It doesn't feel like much of an argument to be had under the circumstances, because the stakes of this story are so high (The resolution is oddly anticlimactic, by the way). The theme here comes across as disconnected from the story and the fierce determination of Comer's performance, and the way the notion takes over the third act of The End We Start From is underwhelming, compared to the rising human and survivalist drama that makes the first two acts compelling, despite how familiar the tale might become.

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