All growed up
In one of my many reviews of the “Up” documentaries, I called it the most noble project in the history of cinema. I’m now older and would avoid such exaggeration but now we are all older and this series confirms that fact in a way which is deeply poignant.
You already know what it is about. In 1964, British TV aired a movie entitled “7 Up,” which was centred on lives, dreams and aspirations of 14 children. They were inclined to segregate themselves among the upper class and working class. Was the British class system dying; they hardly asked.
Following that time, every seven years, as many from those fourteen who are willing have been revisited by the series. Here comes the eighth film “56 Up.” Astonishingly, all fourteen remain alive. Michael Apted, today a prominent British director but then a researcher for that first film took over as its director with “14 Up” and has continued since then. All these people are united through this amazing idea’s continuation though some participants here accept this type of celebrity with mixed feelings.
In Britain, they are household names. Think about Tony (no last names given). When he was young he used to be seen working at a horse racing stable as a stable boy among other things. He had also tried his luck on racing horses before turning into a cabbie for life when it didn’t work out for him, Tony started on “the Knowledge,” or what London taxi drivers call learning nearly every street or landmark in London off by heart during long going on years’ worth of study time needed before becoming licensed to drive taxis inside the city limits. He’s never done anything else with his life ever since.
“56 Up” splices together clips from earlier films to follow each person’s path through life again from there. We see Tony aging, marrying having children buying holiday homes in Spain surviving financial crash and handling uncertainty in the taxi business. (Arab’s good times are cabbies’ better ones. So when oil prices fall, their incomes do likewise.)
One time Tony had Buzz Aldrin, the “spaceman” who walked on moon secondly, as his passenger for a day. As he pulled over his cab, a man in the next car handed him a piece of paper and asked for an autograph. Tony passed it back to Aldrin. “Not him!” said the autograph seeker. “You!”
Out of all the characters I have grown attached to and concerned about throughout this period is Neil; he has problems. He was born in Liverpool and was full of life as a child but by 21 something went terribly wrong with his life.
After that he has gone through quite a number of jobs such as home builder or politician which don’t really go together at all among many others but he never married, he often stayed homeless or just one step from that status, he roamed about Britain living on its fringes usually involved in some vague idealism; having won local office on Liberal Democrat ticket lately Neil is now canon at his local Anglican church. “I can do most of the jobs of a priest,” he adds rather sadly.
Neil was somehow messed up, for what no one knows. How can we explain Sue who as students in London’s working class East End got together with her friends Jackie and Lynn. She divorced with two children who found herself a secretarial job that later resulted to a top management position. And we see her speaking to a lecture hall full of students, telling them how strange this feels (since she never went to university herself).
“56 Up” revisits all of their lives including a Scientist at the University of Wisconsin and a man whom dropped out of the series but has now dropped back in” admittedly to promote his band. A single lesson is learned from this film; it is that as we grow older, we tend to grow happier and more successful individuals. According to our best guess, all subjects have grown wiser, more useful, more pleased with the way things are turning out.
I don’t know what that means. It may mean nothing from statistical viewpoint. But here they all are at age 7 in 1964 when Michael Apted pays them a visit every seven years. It is beyond human understanding how life works. I do not even think there exists any other cinematographic enterprise that helps us realize this better than Under Even Neil, I think he has found happiness suitable for him.
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