Review by C.J. Bunce
Michael Apted’s ground-breaking Up Series is almost interactive in its immersion of the viewer into the lives of 14 children from the lower and upper classes of London as they grow and spread across the world over the next 50 years. At the beginning of the first documentary from 1964, 7 Up, the purpose of the first show was revealed:
“Why do we bring these children together? Because we want to get a glimpse of England in the year 2000. The union leader and the business executive of the year 2000 are now seven years old.”
The initial episode interviewed the children about their thoughts and dreams. The children ranged from lower class kids, some who appeared sad and distant yet hopeful, to the kids from wealthier means who seemed almost prescient of their lives’ future paths. Seven years later Michael Apted, the now well-known director of Gorillas in the Mist, The World is Not Enough, Coal Miner’s Daughter and Gorky Park, was just out of university, and at 22 he revisited the original 7 Up project. From there he has returned to interview and share with us the status of these people every seven years in this unique time-capsule-meets-time-travel voyage. In June 2012 the eagerly awaited 56 Up revealed what had happened to everyone in the intervening seven years to television audiences in its principal release in England. First Run Features began a limited release of 56 Up in the States and Canada last month and this weekend the broader distribution begins in movie theaters across North America. Check our earlier article here to find out about local movie listings of 56 Up in your area.
Thanks to First Run Features, borg.com was given a special screening of 56 Up this week. We’re happy to report that just as fans of Apted’s work have come to expect, 56 Up stands up to its prior entries. The gut-wrenching feeling as you watched the rollercoaster ride of certain individuals’ experiences from past episodes is happily less present as the Up crew reaches 56 years of age. Where the past two installments carried underlying themes of encountering traumas of life, like divorce and deaths of family members, we can glean from the older and wiser individuals a universal view of happiness and maybe tranquility now, an acceptance of self, and less real regrets about past decisions throughout their lives than discussed before. That isn’t to say that the impacts of a typical daily life, including a devastating UK recession, are not very real to the subjects of the film. Yet despite some participants now caring for adult children and even their grandchildren, living on government aid, and encountering other negative changes of circumstance, when asked by Apted even the most challenged of the group are thankful for what they have.
