MIDNIGHT REVIEWS The End We Start From
Midnight Reviews features reviews and thought pieces written and edited by a parent, at night, after bedtime.
This afternoon’s movie…
“Another one, Daddy.”
“You do it.”
“No you do it. Daddy story, Daddy.”
“This is the last one.”
“Okay.”
“It’s not going to be the last one, is it?”
“No.”
Review: Daddy Stories, Part II is just as thrilling as the first instalment, seeing as the story is exactly the same. Featuring small vignettes such as Silly Tiger (With Other Animals) and No, Not That One, The Other One, the sequel gives the audience more of the same, which is exactly what they wanted.
The evening review…
THE END WE START FROM (1hr 42mins)
Directed by: Mahalia Belo
Featuring: Jodie Comer, Katherine Waterston, Joel Fry
Synopsis: A terrific flood washes through Britain, just as pregnant Mother (Comer) goes into labour. She must find a way to keep herself and her family safe.
Review:
The End We Start From, funnily enough, starts off well. We’re introduced to a pregnant woman (Comer, credited as playing the role Mother), running a bath and watching TV as she ignores the rain belting down outside. It’s a realistic take on how modern city-goers would react, completely unequipped to deal with survival situations, and it’s here that the film also competently shows through simple camera tricks that the world is being tipped upside-down even if Mother doesn’t know it.
Comer is fantastic throughout.
After this nerve-jarring opening, the film drops down a level as the birth of a child is carried out without incident apart from a tap coughing out a little dirty water and some hospital staff running round (as opposed to a real-life hospital setting, where staff are free and able to laze around and chat). Despite the flooding already hitting sock-soaking heights, any tension has disappeared. It’s this sort of mix of incredible tautness and fancy free travelling that defines the rest of the film.
Certain sequences, whilst perhaps not using it as a touchstone, are an echo of the 1980s movie Threads, but without that film’s utter hopelessness and unbearable finality. The End We Start From is much lighter in tone and certain sequences seem to meander between ‘We’re all going to die’ and ‘Sunday walk in the park’. Perhaps this is what the script was going for, to show that there is hope after loss if we accept certain people around us, but most of the early tension easing off is to the film’s detriment. If the film were better at examining its main themes, this could be forgiven.
Comer is fantastic throughout, giving a thoroughly natural performance. But the script doesn’t allow us in too much despite Mother appearing in every scene, creating a distance between us and the screen. Small titbits link to other characters’ stories in that they’re about deep, personal loss, and the small but essential likelihood that things will turn out alright in the end.
Unable to do anything with the multitude of tools it has at its disposal.
This constant dialogue comes in many forms. From Mother’s glossed-over conversation about dead family to a commune that brings up interesting questions about how to approach such a terrible disaster. But, like any examination of its main character, the film doesn’t successfully explore these questions, as if the film wants us to do all of the legwork. But to be emotionally affecting, it needs to give more.
Fellow survivor and mum O gives Mother hope for a better tomorrow, and Waterston’s charming, easy performance makes it easy for both us and Mother to like this character and bond over taking care of children as well as losses big and small they’ve both incurred.
Other performances feel equally real, but of these we’re only really let in on R (Fry), and even then the heavy work is done by the acting with the script struggling to offer anything substantial. Big names like Mark Strong and Benedict Cumberbatch are extended cameos at best. Gina McKee as a commune leader is perfectly cast, her performance giving us her natural charm and warmth before searing into a broken human being refusing to contemplate the past. And then she’s gone for the rest of the movie.
One element the script does get completely right is the isolation of Mother. The film doesn’t give in to the temptation to crosscut between her and anyone else, letting us feel and know just as much as our protagonist, wondering where characters are once they’re separated.
In theory, we want Mother and her loved ones to be reunited, but once we reach the end a strange thing happens. A movie featuring a mother separated from almost all her loved ones, her home destroyed, her mental and physical self put through the wringer and her future with her baby uncertain, somehow makes a hopeful ending feel unearned, something completely antithetical to the film’s central premise.
A set-up with such potential to examine any number of ideas finds itself floundering and unable to do anything with the multitude of tools it has at its disposal. A disappointment simply because of the promise the film started with.
