The End We Start From (2023) A Very British, Very Woman-Centred Apocalypse (Review)

As you would expect from a contributor to Scarred For Life such as myself, I’ve long enjoyed a good apocalyptic drama. I could never really be doing with zombies all that much in this subgenre however, as I believe the real monsters when our backs are to the wall will almost inevitably be our fellow man. To that end, Survivors was my favourite, and The End We Start From, released to Blu-ray this week after some critical and commercial success in cinemas earlier this year, often put me in mind of Terry Nation’s classic 70s plague drama.

Based on the award-winning 2017 debut novel of the same name by Megan Hunter, The End We Start From is the feature debut of director Mahalia Belo, whose previous impressive credits for television have included the 2017 BAFTA winning single drama Ellen, the six-part psychological drama Requiem and the TV adaption of Andrea Levy’s novel about the last days of slavery in Jamaica, The Long Song, both broadcast in 2018. The film stars Killing Eve’s Jodie Comer as Woman (we never learn her real name, nor the names of anyone else in the movie, who are identified merely as letters from the alphabet), who goes into labour just as a devastating climate catastrophe hits and London becomes submerged by unprecedented floodwaters. Entering motherhood and a new, chaotic world, Woman must gather all her strength and determination to navigate treacherous waters to keep her newborn safe. Seperated from her partner R (Joel Fry) in the confusion and mayhem that follows, she is forced to go it alone and endeavours to finally find a place to call home for her and her baby, Z.

Despite my love for these stories, one thing that always struck me as a little bewildering was how quickly the characters adjust to their post-apocalyptic lives. How, for example, could Terry Nation’s protagonists in Survivors deal so swiftly and pragmatically with a world in which 99.98% of the population has been decimated by a plague pandemic? How could they just accept what was, not personal loss on such an unimaginable scale, but also the loss of the entire infrastructure that sustains us? Of course nowadays, these stories – and The End We Start From – hit a little differently in two major respects. The first is that we, as a society (if not necessarily our political leaders), are all too aware of how finite the world’s natural resources are which, when combined with the growing climate crisis, means that a climate disaster survival story such as the one depicted here feels more like a realistic primer for what’s to come, rather than a sci-fi fantasy. The second respect is that, in a post-Covid world, we have all had recent experience of just how fast life changes and how imperative it is that we adapt to those developments in the short term.

As with all these dystopic dramas, The End We Start From plunges its character head first into the situation, taking its audience along for the dizzying developments as Woman confronts them, showing an indomitable spirit and incredible determination to survive, but that’s not to say that Alice Birch’s screenplay doesn’t afford moments of retrospection. “Some people find it harder. They have more to give up” says Gina McKee’s commune leader F, after catching Woman in vulnerable reflection. “It is difficult but, this doesn’t work. It stops working for everybody if one person isn’t present. It isn’t real anymore. What you miss doesn’t exist” In that scene, we see how impossible it is for Woman to just let go of what she once had and how she struggles against the daunting prospect of the new world, but we also witness in F’s logic the rationale behind why it is necessary to do so, for the collective good. It’s a small moment, one which may not necessarily resonate deeply with everyone, but from the perspective of what I’ve just outlined – the believability of the characters in such drama, and the reality of what we ourselves have recently experienced – I found it extremely important.

Remove the apocalyptic tropes from The End We Start From and what rightly stands is a very human and universal story about motherhood and protecting and providing for a newborn child. It’s not by chance that Belo seeks to synchronise Comer’s nameless character’s waters breaking with the rising flood levels across the capital. Showcasing the subject in extremis, the world seemingly coming to an end, serves to enhance the drama’s central metaphor that for Woman, one world has indeed been brought to a close by having a baby. After all, how often do we hear that “your life won’t be the same again” after giving birth? The film’s sparse language, its elliptical style and refusal to even name its protagonists, somehow declutters the implications of the weighty, huge dystopic narrative and affords a keener, sharper eye to the subject matter. Whilst all around them lies peril and tumultous change, the ordinary milestones of Z’s young life continue unabated, and we realise with clarity that, despite Woman’s associations, this will be the only world that her child will ever know.

It isn’t just the connection between mother and baby that Belo’s film captures either, as there’s a very satisfying female friendship that plays out across much of the running time between Comer and her fellow new mum O, played by Katherine Waterson. Once again, and unsurprisingly given that the key creatives behind the camera on this – the director, four of the five producers, the screenwriter and the original author – are all women, The End We Start From captures something commonplace and domestically-minded for audiences, namely the maternal support network that mothers ordinarily develop in the community, and proceeds to write it large across the canvas of an environmental and societal collapse. The intensity of the bond between new mothers is an identifiable and relatable one, but when placed in this extreme context, it becomes even more so, with Waterson arriving just in time to boost Comer’s confidence and resilience, not only from the despair she feels as a new mum but also the despair she feels at the ravaged world around her. The scene in which they tramp through the hills cheerfully belting out Dirty Dancing‘s (I’ve Had) The Time of My Life like stragglers from a hen do that has long passed over the horizon is an especially charming one that nevertheless speaks to the importance of female solidarity and of boosting one another’s spirits.

Like the aforementioned Survivors before it, this is a very British apocalypse. Whilst violence is shown, it is fleeting and physical, or exists merely as an implied, menacing threat. There are very little guns on display in The End We Start From and certainly no unhinged survivalist preppers ready to pick off anyone who dares mistake them for a Good Samaritan willing to share. Indeed, though some form of military presence is in evidence, its hardly full-on martial law. Instead, there appears to be the familiar fudge of troops helping out a barely functioning welfare state and central/local government in our hour of need. Again, this may have something to do with it being a narrative told exclusively from a feminine rather than masculine viewpoint, but there’s something weirdly hopeful and equally strangely familiar in the potential post-apocalyptic landscape mapped out here. The End We Start From depicts a post-apocalypse in tune with where we are now. It’s one of crisis-hit hospitals and crowded refuge shelters for the many homeless and dispossessed; and really, when are these things anything else? It depicts a post-apocalypse not of gun-toting survivalists, but of a female-led island commune that is welcoming and extols the virtues of an alternative, back-to-basics collectivist lifestyle. And ultimately, it’s post-apocalypse is one of homes that simply lay dormant and flood damaged, seemingly waiting for their owners, the inevitable clean-up and the headache of arranging a skip-hire that lies ahead.

It’s a woman-centred movie led by Woman, as portrayed by the ever-impressive Comer, whose mix of vulnerability and defiant idealism is a winning one. Occasionally men do feature in the narrative; most notably the aforementioned Fry as R, but there’s also room for a pair of A-list cameos in Mark Strong as R’s father N and Benedict Cumberbatch as AB, just one of the affected that Comer and Waterson encounter on the road north. Cumberbatch also served as executive producer on the film, his company SunnyMarch acquiring the rights for the adaptation before Hunter’s novel had even been published, so I guess we must be thankful for him in that regard. Personally though, I felt that his own familiar brand of (alpha) star wattage almost pulled me away from the impetus of the movie in ways that Strong, or indeed Nina Sosanya (as his wife G) or the aforementioned McKee, long established performers all, did not.

Mark’s Archive – The End We Start From