Here is a post-apocalyptic drama of survival, a fiercely acted and unnerving real-time demonstration of law and order breaking down. It is all the more disturbing, credible and immediate in that, unlike other examples of genre, the narrative isn’t heading for an abyss of unknowable chaos. Rather, it envisions society’s grim normalisation of disaster and loss, an evolutionary leap downwards but one in which a kind of rebirth is not ruled out.
In contrast to the American post-apocalypse of John Hillcoat’s The Road, or the European apocalypse of Michael Haneke’s Time of the Wolf, this film is a very British world-ending – because the populace are unarmed, or mostly. First-time director Mahalia Belo and screenwriter Alice Birch (who has adapted the novel by Megan Hunter) may have taken something from the 70s BBC TV classic Survivors. The film’s vision of climate change and of those low-lying British cities, naturally positioned near the very rivers and commercial waterways which are going to drown them, couldn’t be more timely. So many people imagine the effects of climate disaster in only the most abstract terms, and don’t grasp that it means fire and flood.
Jodie Comer plays a pregnant young woman living in London: smart, tough and with a supportive partner played by Joel Fry; the movie begins with a black-comic irony, as her waters break just as the heavy rain escalates into something more catastrophic. Giving birth in a crisis-hit hospital and getting home in the riotous streets, she is calm because having a baby for the first time is just such a radical upheaval that she hardly notices.
Fry’s new-dad figure is charming and easygoing, coming up with facetious suggestions for naming a baby born into a world of water: Noah and Bob. But instead, in a spirit of weird blankness and a feeling of having reached the end of their conceptual tether, they call the baby “Zeb”. The couple head for his parents (Mark Strong and Nina Sosanya) who live out in the country with a stockpile of food, but when this runs low, dangerous sorties have to be made into the terrifyingly lawless countryside to find government shelter-support stations which are overrun by violent hungry mobs; Comer faces a lonely battle to survive with her baby.
This is a road movie and quest movie, of sorts, with alpha-grade supporting performances from Katherine Waterston, Benedict Cumberbatch and Gina McKee. These keep the film’s IQ at the highest level, although I wasn’t entirely sure about the emollient later flashbacks showing the beginnings of the young woman’s relationship with her partner. Comer’s vulnerability and idealism are authentic as are her determination and a dash of real ruthlessness – for a moment, she becomes one of the scary people to be encountered on the road, and not particularly regretting it afterwards. She carries everything with unselfconscious strength and style.
• The End We Start From is released on 19 January in UK cinemas, with an Australia release to be confirmed.
