The End We Start From is the rare conventional “we’ve seen this before” genre film that edges ahead of its competition by way of its unconventional dedication to reality. It also squanders that edge in the name of reaching some neoliberal fantasy ending, the very fantasy ending the film seeks to critique in its first two acts. In short, it is a stunningly well-made and -acted film with high highs and a ground-shaking low in the form of an annoyingly false motif. “There’s no time to waste,” says The End We Start From, right as it decides to waste your time. Still, there are many worse ways to waste 90 minutes and change, and many audience members who are meant to be challenged by this work will instead feel affirmed and have a greater time than I did.
Jodie Comer as Woman in Maharishi Belo’s disaster thriller THE END WE START FROM. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Jodie Comer (Free Guy; The Last Duel) stars as an expecting mother waiting out a storm in her London flat while her husband, played by Joe Fry (Yesterday; Cruella), is away for work. As the child arrives, so does the first wave of the coming climate disaster: a superstorm that floods and submerges huge sections of the British Isles.
Jodie Comer as Woman in Maharishi Belo’s disaster thriller THE END WE START FROM. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
Comer is an absolute star in this film. The movie is excellently filmed from her perspective, never straying from a Terrence Malick (The Tree of Life; The Thin Red Line) influenced photography style that trades the omniscient for the intensely singular. Charming, funny, and transparently human, Comer is very good here. This performance alone is worth the watch, but a strong supporting cast of Joel Fry, Mark Strong (Tár; Kingsman: The Secret Service), Katherine Waterson (Babylon, mid90’s), Nim Sosanya (Love Actually; Good Omens), and even Benedict Cumberbatch (Doctor Strange; Sherlock) in his second pop-in two-scene film appearance just one month into 2024, bring it all together. The ensemble all mesh with Comer so well that I lost track of who might be potential romantic interests for Comer’s character, until I realized how many actors were flirting with her. The saying goes that the secret to a great Tom Cruise (The Last Samurai) movie is that everyone making the movie wants to f*ck Tom Cruise. Well, the same goes for Comer here, as she proves she could make sparks fly with a rusty doorknob. The high point of the film is her interaction with Cumberbatch, one which would have been given to Matt Damon (The Martian) or Phillip Seymour Hoffman (Punch Drunk Love) in a once-upon-a-time American version of this film. Instead, Cumberbatch reminds us that he is capable of so much more than Hollywood asks of him. An unselfish performance, he doesn’t steal the show, but for three minutes, he and Comer commit a little light identity theft, and put on a better, different show.
L-R: Benedict Cumberbatch as AB and Jodie Comer as Woman in Maharishi Belo’s disaster thriller THE END WE START FROM. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
The End We Start From is a low-budget, British Independent adaption of a well-liked novel. For all that it achieves, it should be praised. The CGI effects are spectacularly employed and artful. The cast is incredible. Mahalia Belo (Ellen; The Long Song) directs the film with a confident hand. Its shortcomings come from a lack of daring in the adaption.
Jodie Comer as Woman in Maharishi Belo’s disaster thriller THE END WE START FROM. Photo courtesy of Paramount Pictures.
What works on the page does not always work on the screen. Good adaptations know this, and make changes regardless of the voices of angry fans. This is a text about climate change and fear of death. It places, in opposition to the fear of death, acceptance. To refuse acceptance is to wallow in the fear of death, fear even of discussing, remembering, or acknowledging the deaths of the world and people we know to climate change. And yet, in the film’s attempt to transform Comer’s character into a figure of defiant acceptance and hope, she is instead turned into a figure of denial of a different kind, and the film bends to prove her right.
Of course, The End We Start From’s U.S. release is being buried on VOD streaming. It’s exactly what none of us want to think about, and despite its protests to the contrary, the film doesn’t want to, either.
Available on digital February 6th, 2024.
For more information, head either to the official Paramount Pictures The End We Start From webpage or website.
Final Score: 3.5 out of 5.
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