The End We Start From

I’ve confessed many times to the fact that a lot of my stories come from people watching at the end of the world. If there’s one obvious fact we can state with complete certainty, it’s that when the end of days comes, EVERYONE will be affected. That’s what makes the subject of Armageddon so fascinating to me, I think. It’s the great leveller: no matter who we are, where we are, what we do, or what we have, when the world ends we’re all fucked.

Cheery stuff for a Friday evening, eh?

There are some visions of the apocalypse that manifest themselves in huge action scenes with endless crowds of extras. There are some that don’t. THE END WE START FROM is a muted apocalyptic tale with a focus on the bond between a mother and her newborn child. It’s a really interesting thing to consider – the creation of a new life in the face of the imminent loss of everything. I read the novel earlier this year, and caught up with the movie adaptation (starring JODIE COMER) recently when it dropped on NETFLIX. My bottom line – loved the novel, liked the film.

A woman tries to find her way home with her newborn while an environmental crisis submerges London in floodwaters.

MEGAN HUNTER‘s novel took me by surprise. It’s beautifully written. It’s remarkably sparse: at the same time both light on detail, yet heavy on emotion. The book eschews a number of literary norms, and is all the better for it. People are referred to by their initial rather than their name, for example, and there is no direct dialogue. It’s almost poem-like at times and the style complements the subject matter. It’s the story of a mother and her child, a new life being brought into the world as it teeters on the edge of climate-driven oblivion, and the singular focus on the thoughts of the new mother feels appropriate. Let’s be honest, everything changes when you bring a new baby into the world anyway. Nothing feels the way it did before your new arrival arrived. You can only imagine the impact it would have on a new mum’s maternal instincts as the rest of the world falls apart around her.

I found the film adaptation less successful. It’s very well made, and the cast (particularly COMER) are superb, but I felt like there was a disconnection because we’re not so deeply entrenched in the mother’s thoughts. The threats and the dangers are the same as in the book, but the emotional impact of those events didn’t hit home as hard in the movie for me. It must have been a difficult book to adapt for the screen. Having watched far too many apocalyptic movies in my time, I think you can tell a lot by rewatching the trailer after you’ve seen the film. There’s often a negative correlation between the number of money shots crammed into the two minutes or so of a trailer and the overall impact of a film. To my mind, it can be a sign of a distributor struggling to know how to market an end of the world movie, so they focus on the big effects shots and action scenes in the hope of appealing to a wider audience. In the trailer for THE END WE START FROM, you get numerous glimpses of flooded London and huge crowd scenes, along with out of context snatches of dialogue that misrepresent the story somewhat. The film is low-key, the trailer isn’t.

I guess what I’m saying here is THE END WE START FROM is a very interesting take on the apocalypse, but it’s a lot quieter and more subdued than you might expect from the marketing. I recommend watching it if you’re in the mood for a thought-provoking end of the world story with an unusual perspective, but if you have the time I’d suggest reading the novel instead.