The End We Start From

dir: Mahalia Belo

2023

Where does it end? For any of us, for all of us? And do we get to start again?

The post-apocalyptic as a setting in television and movies has probably taken over almost every other possible setting or genre trappings, to now be the dominant format for all art forever more.

Usually, though, the reason is zombies and variations thereof. Last year’s The Last of Us was all people could talk about for about 10 weeks, at least the very online people were talking about it. And that had mushrooms as the culprit.

The End We Start From is a tiny bit of a play on words, which probably works on a number of levels. But it’s not really a post-apocalyptic scenario.

A major weather event, which is a euphemism in itself, occurs over and around London. London and surrounds get flooded. As this is happening, a woman goes into labour.

That woman (Jodie Comer) is desperately trying to get in contact with her husband (Joel Fry) and get to a hospital as their ground floor flat starts flooding.

Beautiful baby is born during the flood. Naturally, Noah is suggested as a possible name for him. I think they settle on either Zed or Zeb, not entirely sure.

Well, phew, you’d think the hard part is behind them. A cute anecdote to tell the kid when they grow up.

But London is unliveable, they can’t go home, so they travel to the dad’s parents in the country somewhere, somewhere vaguely more north.

The parents are delighted to see their grandchild. Delighted. It’s almost idyllic. It’s nice to have some additional support when you’re a new parent.

They’re running out of food, though, so everyone who’s not the new mum or the baby pile into the 4WD in order to travel into the nearest town and see what’s available.

A day and a half later, not all of them get back, and the ones who do are deeply traumatised.

And in quick order, it’s mum, dad and the baby, going up north again.

With these kinds of stories, well, in the American context, they’re usually about how long it takes before people start shooting each other for the M&Ms that might be in their pockets. It’s usually about half an hour of screen-time, but it’s also about expressing the paranoia and fear that exists now, pre-apocalyptically, and the insanity of a civilian population that’s already armed and awaiting something terrible happening. Depending on the show or the film, the sooner people start shooting each other or eating each other’s faces, the less faith the creators have in humanity in general and American society specifically.

But this film here is British, mostly set in England. It has something, if anything, different to say about its society and culture. This isn’t a rugged individualist culture, which is code for “shoot everyone and don’t bother asking any questions”. This is a culture with zero paranoia about invasion (despite having been invaded so many times) except by immigrants. And in the context of a massive flooding event, people in little boats would probably be better off sailing back to France or maybe even Rwanda.

This is a flick about reasonable, decent people trying to look after each other without necessarily thinking that everyone else is trying to kill or eat them. This couldn’t be more the opposite of Children of Men, another great “people trying to save a baby in dystopian times” movie, because the point of this flick isn’t to create an adrenaline-fueled well-choreographed hellscape that we are never sure whether the protagonists will survive, or whether we’re going to expire along the way.

This flick isn’t about the fate of humanity, either. It’s just whether these three people, one a baby, will get to survive these tough times. And the mother really loves her crying baby, though she’s finding it super hard. And she loves her husband, and he loves them both, but what of circumstances that might force them to either separate or continue on as is, potentially dooming one of them?

Now that’s a tough choice. The flick does have perilous moments, as in, after a time in a facility where army guys try to maintain some semblance of order, and it doesn’t get to last, and people have to flee in any direction, because people with guns tend to trump people without guns.

Wait, does that make this a pro-gun movie?

Nah. Though I guess it’s a pro-life movie. Pro the life of the mother AND the newborn. The mother, enlisting the support of another mother, who sounds American (Katherine Waterston) and whose baby is a couple of months older, they keep travelling north, with the vain hope that a friend of the American who has somehow set up a commune on a Scottish island will take them all in.

But however unlikely that may seem, what we’re watching is steely eyed new mums who aren’t exactly wielding barbed wire-wrapped baseball bats or samurai swords – they’re just pushing ever forward to get to safety.

And then they bump into someone, who says he’s got food.

I really thought this scene, about halfway through the film, was going to go in a very different direction, but this flick’s point isn’t to horrify – it’s not so bleak. It’s not about people who lose their basic humanity in trying to survive, who are forced to do the unthinkable in order to save themselves or the ones they love.

The choices some of the characters make aren’t that stark, even if it’s implied they are life and death questions. A father decides whether it’s best for his wife and child to be allowed entry into a shelter (thus saving them potentially), though it means he has to go it alone.

Another chap is caught between the choice of staying in a place that’s safe, but demands people ignore what’s happened, pretend the world is permanently gone, and that the past isn’t worth remembering.

But he lost his entire family. He wants to remember them. He never wants to forget them.

I’m obliquely dancing around the fact that this scene halfway through the film involves the two mums (with their babies) meeting a character played by Benedict Cumberbatch, but, let’s be honest, he might as well be Benedict Cumberbatch himself playing himself. It might seem like something of a headscratcher, but he’s also one of the producers of the film, so pretty much he can do what he wants. It’s a bittersweet scene, something of a respite, before the relentless mums move on.

Though there are threats and moments where we could think things are going to turn darker, our main mum character brazenly sneaks, slides, forces her way through, all while being almost haunted by visions of her husband, who she refuses to leave behind, at least in her mind.

And since these characters, who are mostly unnamed, get to make choices, they make choices we might not agree with or understand, and other choices we might not agree with at all. But at least they have the choice.

Jodi Comer is rightly praised as a fine actor, mostly by people who were fans of Killing Eve where she played the sociopathic Villanelle, but I was never a fan of that show despite the fact that everything else I’ve seen her in she’s been either great or magnificent.

She is a fierce force to be reckoned with in this flick, and it’s hard to argue with any of the choices made here. Everyone else does fine as well, but it’s pretty much her story.

The babies? Well, some of them are more convincing than others. I have a feeling that a whole bunch of babies played the main baby, because from one scene to another I would sometimes think “where’d the other baby go?” and, yeah, some of them weren’t great at emoting. Get better acting babies next time! Or maybe give them better directions!

The superb direction by Mahalia Belo always keeps the story close to the mum, always keeping her central in frame, and rarely if ever goes out to a bigger picture level to give a broader context to the disaster (which is does towards the end). We don’t really need it; we just want to know if she and her baby are going to be okay.

I also want to commend the most excellent electronic ambient score composed by Anna Meredith, but I will mention that there’s a moment where the volume in the flick jacked way, WAY the fuck up high, and the soundtrack was clearly intended to make the audience feel the urgency of whatever was going to happen next, but I felt like I was having a heart attack despite nothing worrying happening on screen.

Don’t get too comfortable, it was like they were saying, don’t dream it’s over.

What ending do we get to start from? Do we even get to start again?

8 times I have no illusions that I would be able to survive and thrive in a world without Barbecue Shapes out of 10

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“What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from” – thank you, courtesy of TS Eliot - The End We Start From.