The world is ending in Jodie Comer’s latest. But it’s exactly where she wants to be
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Benedict Cumberbatch’s production company Sunnymarch acquired the rights to “The End We Start From” pre-publication, due in part to the fact that original novelist Hunter is the actor’s sister-in-law. Her prose is sparse and fragmented, told in verse-like glimpses. Not only did Cumberbatch feel it read cinematically, but the female-led story also reflected the vision of Sunnymarch.
“It’s such a powerful, polemic piece, as well as being poetic and also mundane at times,” Cumberbatch says, speaking via Zoom from London. “It’s so honest and raw about early motherhood. The foreground focus of a mother and child in that first year against this epic backdrop of societal and systemic collapse is a very rich mental canvas to draw from.”
Cumberbatch, who plays a small role in the film, adds that the story felt eerily current. It’s not a coincidence, he says, that he’s speaking about it after two weeks of heavy rain catastrophically flooded parts of England.
“But it doesn’t have to be after a deluge of water to imagine this as a reality,” Cumberbatch says. “It is already a reality for people. People are giving birth in crises around the world, whether it’s war or environmental disaster. What’s stark about it is it’s bringing it into a domesticity that’s recognizably British.”