I just discovered the "7 Up" film series. I admit I'm a few years behind the times. The first installment, "7 Up," which captured 14 British 7-year olds and their opinions on life, love, work, politics, education, etc., was produced in 1963. The director, Michael Apted, has been returning every seven years since and filming updates of all the subjects who will still sit for the camera. Last night I watched "28 Up." I cannot stop thinking about it--both the film project and about the subjects themselves.
The premise is the Jesuit saying: "Give me a child until he is seven and I will show you the man." The series asks: Is this true? So far, to an amazing extent, it is. Quite quickly, however, between "14 Up" and "21 Up" there is one, shocking reversal. Neil, one of the most lively and charismatic 7-year olds, has become homeless and clearly has psychiatric trouble. Yet there is a shocking reversal to the positive between "21 Up" and "28 Up." Suzy, the sullen, cynical, almost-hostile chain-smoking upper-class girl at 21, showed up relaxed and happy, the married mother of two at 28 and attributed the turn-around to her marriage, not exactly a popular thing to say in 1985 any more than now. Otherwise, the paths are fairly predictable, at least up until they are 28.
But even this far, the second focus of the film--the advantages of being upper class--has gotten complicated. Four of the working class participants express, at 28, that they feel sorry for the upper class ones, using quotes from them as evidence. Social position does not translate directly into happiness, at least by 28. I'm anxious to see whether that holds through "49 Up," the latest of the series. The next one, "56 Up," is due out in 2011 or 2012.
The series would be interesting in any event, but is particularly interesting to me because these subjects are only slightly younger than I am. I was no surprise to me that the director chose 10 boys and 4 girls (which he later regretted). The difficult interviews with male subjects and their new wives about roles in marriage had a painful familiarity, too. How many of these marriages end up in divorce, I wonder? Probably quite a few if these people are like those I knew at the same ages and time. But what the condensed nature of the lives captured in these films make clear is that while loss and disappointment are part of aging, there are compensating joys, too, and those are not distributed by race or class.
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