| DVD Roundup September 2007
The Up Series
 In 1964, Paul Almond filmed 14
British seven-year-olds from all social strata for a TV program entitled Seven Up.
The idea of the show was to give Britons a one-time glimpse of their country's future
through the words and actions of children. Motivated by the Jesuit maxim, "Give me
the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," Michael Apted filmed six
more parts of what has become known as The Up Series, a collection of films that
gives insight into the lives of those original children. Apted has dutifully visited every
seven years, with the most recent installment, 49 Up, debuting in 2006. The entire
series is now available as a six-DVD set.
It's chic to consider The Up Series the grandfather
of today's reality-TV craze, but that's doing it a great disservice. The Up movies
prod and probe like no TV today, getting to the heart of life's rich pageant through the
stories of the original 14 subjects. There's Tony, a ball of energy at seven who wants to
become a jockey but settles into family life as a hardworking cabby. Suzy comes from
privilege. She suffers her parents' divorce at 14, turns into a cynical, chain-smoking
21-year-old, but also settles into parenthood. John has his life planned as a child and
becomes just the person he predicted he would be. Nicolas is precocious at seven, shy at
14, and then precocious again at 21, eventually becoming a professor at an American
university.
Because of their breadth and depth, such stories require
real time to develop, and that's exactly what they get in The Up Series. Together
the movies comprise ten hours of watching. We witness marriages, births, divorces, near
divorces and deaths -- the grist of life. Director Apted is also the person who interviews
each subject. For the most part, these are sedate, one-on-one conversations, though his
questions are probing and often tough. His subjects obviously trust him, because they seem
to answer whatever he asks, though not as a matter of confession but rather as a matter of
fact. They have bought in to this radical project. A few of the original 14 children drop
out along the way, including one who ironically becomes a BBC documentary producer, but
there's always hope that we'll see them again. Such is the magnetism of these movies.
Why should you spend ten hours of your life watching the
lives of strangers? Why do we work, worship, bond and have families? Why do we feel
compelled to understand ourselves? As much as the answers to these questions are personal,
they are also universal and speak to the heart of human existence and life's mysteries.
Neil's story is the most compelling of them all, because of
the roller-coaster ride his life takes. An outgoing, bright-eyed child who wants to be an
astronaut or bus driver, he becomes a more stoic adolescent and then a sad adult. At 28,
he's a dirt-poor nomad, and at 35 he's on the dole and living in the remote Shetland
Islands. But at 42 he seems poised for better days. He's back in London with an eye toward
public service, and he has reconnected with one of his Up Series colleagues. Things
are even better at 49.
What is he Up to now? That's the question that will
be on your mind as you watch these astonishing films, which comprise one of the most
ambitious cinematic projects ever attempted. 56 Up should be released promptly in
2013. I've already marked my calendar.
...Marc Mickelson
marc@hometheatersound.com |
