TIFF 2023: In ‘The End We Start From,’ Jodie Comer Takes on Motherhood Amid a Climate Change Crisis

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 14, 2023 |

By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | September 14, 2023 |

It’s been argued that, during troubled times, many of us gravitate towards dystopian fiction. Perhaps we seek answers for our uncertain future or solutions on how to prevent it. Every time a politician limits reproductive freedoms, it seems like The Handmaid’s Tale starts selling well on Amazon. The devastation of climate change has never been more present in our lives than it has this past year, and pop culture has been waiting. My own local library has a climate change/dystopian fiction shelf set up (right next to horror, which is maybe too on the nose.) One of the more prominent books in this section is The End We Start From by Megan Hunter, a slim and poetic story of a woman trying to navigate a drastically changing landscape after giving birth to her first son. Now, we have the film, with Jodie Comer back to remind us of her ferocious talents.

On the day that Comer’s nameless protagonist gives birth, London starts to flood. The streets fill with water and people are forced to flee the city. With her partner (Joel Fry from Our Flag Means Death) and days-old son in tow, they head to seemingly safer pastures. Her in-laws seem to have the ideal space for them to ride out whatever is going on. But the reverberations of what one radio announcer describes as the ‘great flood’ are intense, and soon they must flee to… wherever is available. Food becomes scarce. Kindness dissipates. Attempts to provide order involve guns and the military.

If the catastrophe of The End We Start From feels familiar, it’s only because we’re painfully aware of how the current climate crisis will play out. We don’t see much of the flood itself, beyond a dramatic opening of Comer’s home being destroyed that may or may not be a dream. The beauty of the British countryside does a lot of heavy lifting in conveying the overall mood. The relationship between human and nature feels forever tenuous, as Comer trudges through empty hills and mud-soaked forests for some sign of civilization. It takes very little for the postcard-perfect scenery to become desolate and inescapable, and it’s striking what they get done on a tight budget. Director Mahalia Belo, a TV veteran making her feature film debut here, keeps to the mournful but not hopeless focus of the novel, which is a new mother’s desperate fight for her child’s safety.

Comer is, predictably, excellent. Her talents are well-known at this point, thanks to her many awards and recent Broadway triumph with Prima Facie, but there is always something surprising to be found in her nuances. Here, she is a perfectly normal middle-class woman thrown into extraordinary circumstances, but not one who becomes special as a result. She is pragmatic but stubborn, eager to hold onto a kind of stoicism without sacrificing her softness.

With her extremely adorable baby, she cracks jokes and tries to do the things that any new parent would do if the world weren’t underwater, and Belo doesn’t flinch from the literal messiness of motherhood (a brief burst of graphicness during the childbirth scene is refreshingly matter-of-fact.) It is often said that becoming a parent changes you completely, and here, it provides Comer with less a new kind of strength than sheer dang perseverance. She reins in her growing terror, only letting it out for one rather tropey screaming-in-the-wild scene we could have done without. If you can’t trust Jodie Comer to get the job done then why bother? This is her show, although she does get strong support from Fry (whose trembles and trauma convey a lot in a brief amount of screen time), the ever-underrated Katherine Waterson, and a one-scene cameo from Benedict Cumberbatch (the film’s producer, alongside his wife Sophie Hunter - their sister-in-law wrote the book.)

The book is fragmentary and interior, one woman’s view on the chaos as it unfolds over several months. Time is almost inconsequential for her, which can make for a meandering experience for the viewer. Brief flashbacks to when Comer and Fry met don’t add much to the story, or feel like a potent enough reminder of the world that came before all of this happened. That’s a big issue because one of the main themes of the story is the ways that dark times often force us to forget who we were and where we came from. One character notes that he left relative sanctity because they wanted to forget and he couldn’t. Comer’s third act unfolds after she makes a similar choice, arguing that she has to be able to tell her son one day that she tried, but the thematic lyricism of the source material feels ill-fitting in the hefty realism we see on-screen. Yes, there’s an important point to be made about the middle-class pretentious jerks who deny the outside world to live in comfort with their privileges, but rejecting the folks with all the food and water doesn’t feel so satisfying when you have a newborn slung to your back.

Despite a familiar set-up, The End We Start From wisely avoids most of the apocalyptic genre cliches, remaining on the fringes of the action so that its protagonist can have their journey. As we see other mothers with their children (and it is mostly women), we are reminded that Comer is but one of potentially millions taking this journey. Hers is not unique, and it won’t remain so. Therein is the most terrifying truth of the story. Will love be enough to get us all through it?

The End We Start From had its world premiere at the 2023 Toronto International Film Festival. It has been acquired by Republic Pictures in the US but currently does not have an American release date. It will be released in the UK on January 24, 2024.