In Mahalia Belo’s The End We Start From, the apocalypse begins with a flood — slowly seeping at first, and then annihilating all at once. Torrential rain knocking down doors, destroying the serenity of a life hard won. The film, helmed almost singularly by Jodie Comer, delivering a performance like a force of nature unto itself, is a tour de force not only for its poetically delicate, therefore all the more realistic and damning, depiction of the gradual onset of our swiftly approaching new reality courtesy of climate change, but also and primarily for the way in which it follows Comer’s protagonist: revealing in heartbreaking bursts how important love, more than anything else, is to survival.
Comer plays a first-time mother with a newborn baby thrown into cataclysm as floodwaters displace Londoners. At first, Comer’s character and her husband (played by Joel Fry) are able to catch a moment of rustic bliss as they settle in his parents’ secluded home in the countryside. But when an attempt to stock up on food forces the family to separate, the young mother and her baby are left on their own, stumbling through foraging for food, a skill that modernity never prepared her for, and raising a baby alone, as she works to find her way back to the safety of her ravaged home in London.
The script, written by Alice Birch and Megan Hunter, is sparse but charged with an emotional intuition so poignant it’s tough to keep your eyes dry as you watch. Belo’s stunning direction and the raw cinematography (by Suzie Lavelle) look to the sprawling nature around Comer’s protagonist with awed and aching eyes. The English country captured by the film seems intentionally not to be cast in a forlorn and dystopic light, but rather depicted in its unruly beauty. The rain is uncaring, the leaves are lush and green and seem to rejoice at the neverending downpour , and the sea is endlessly whipped by rushing and frenetic wind. Nature, here, is shown in all its galling power, destructive as it is life-giving.
As the earth is captured in its thunderous strength, Comer’s protagonist is depicted in her quiet strength, which she discovers haltingly and fearfully. There’s something muted about Comer’s performance in this film — a career-best portrayal, she achieves deep vulnerability here as she uncertainly cradles her baby, trying to hush its cries as the world bleeds around her. As she tearfully plays peek-a-boo with him, we can see on her face, in her trembling lips, the work her character is doing to be strong enough to keep herself and her baby alive. It is Comer’s beguiling and strident performance that carries this film. For much of the film she is alone, finding her way through an indifferent and rushing world, amongst people driven to cruelty. At every moment, she seems to be quivering with uncertainty, and her mind keeps reaching back into past moments of sleepy bliss. Playing a nuanced type against the confident maternal figure that maintains stalwart hope in traditional apocalypse films, Comer here is scared, alone, and confused doubly as a new mom facing the end, in an almost affront to the romantic idea that a woman carries maternal instincts in her blood.
The film seems to ask what is required to keep a mother and baby alive, what is required for happiness and health. And in graceful flourishes it offers the answer: love. Comer’s character’s happiest and healthiest moments are those she spends with a friend she makes at a shelter, learning from her, and then for a moment within a commune, whose safety and peace allow her to attain the realization that she wants to be with her husband. The film realizes that survival requires moments of stillness, love, the giving and receiving of it. This is its greatest achievement.
The End We Start From is revelatory in its depiction of the mundane way in which apocalypse begins, and it’s also delicately prescient for presenting various ways to survive. But its undeniable gift lies in its understanding of us as beings who need love to be able to give it, whether it be from community, from a partner, or from a friend. In a curious turn against traditional, masculine survival films, The End We Start From posits that survival isn’t possible in greedy isolation. Comer’s performance is showstopping and the film itself is a treasure, instructive as it is edifying; perhaps now we too will survive when the end comes, if we start with love.
