Seven Up!

Michael Apted must be congratulated for having (or perhaps stumbling upon) the vision for this study. Take 14 seven year olds in England, film them in a few interesting situations, and follow those same kids as they grow up. Every seven years. Because all of our lives transpire at roughly the same rates, we cannot actually observe children growing up. But this filmed approach is the next best thing.

This first film is rather short, and in black and white plays about like an amateur home movie. We still get to see and hear these children, their opinions, their likes and dislikes, their ambitions. And, while it is interesting, you can get the same thing at any elementary school playground. What is really interesting, and groundbreaking, is the following these children as they grow up.

For that, one must see the next installments. The best way, for the uninitiated, is the 5-disk DVD set just out, which has all 6 films up through "42 UP" in 1998. ("49 UP" has been made but is not yet available on DVD.) However, simply seeing the most recent film is pretty good, because each film contains snippets of each of the former ones, allowing us to see how each child developed in 7-year increments.

Just a marvelous study of growing up.

49 up was screened here i two episodes. Recent meetings with the participants were interwoven with flashbacks from the earlier interviews at ages 7, 14, 21, 28, 35 and 42. So beautifully put together. No sensationalism. No hopping about. Each interview subject was able to unfurl their lives in a steady pace that kept me enthralled throughout.

It's a breathtaking idea that grew out of an interest in finding out what happened to the original group after another 7 years when the children had become 14. The producers have kept in touch and most of the subjects have been more or less willing to be interviewed in the subsequent years.

This series of interviews, especially seen in the light of the fact that I am nearly as old as the people involved in this project, gave me so much. Seeing people live their lives, suffering set-backs, dealing with life's many stumbling blocks, gaining unexpected insights into themselves and their loved ones makes for a very gripping and fulfilling experience.

Absolutely marvelous. A gem.

And that's how the astonishingly thought-provoking and five-decade spanning "Up" documentaries series started, a TV odyssey following the lives of a dozen of British boys and girls with one episode every seven years, the most recent one was "56 Up" and it was released in 2012 and always directed by Michael Apted (with the exception of the first episode from 1964). What a concept!

Indeed, it's not much about these boys and girls that it is about time and life, the real protagonists, heroic, neutral or villainous depending on the circumstances or each life's narrative. But don't pay too much attention to my praises, I've only seen the first episode so far, yet I find the concept extraordinary and riveting on an emotional level. And for that, I'm glad I bumped into that "Siskel& Ebert" show that covered the "35 Up" episode of 1991 which made me immediately think, "wait? Such a documentary existed and I never heard about it?" As far as I was concerned, the groundbreaking creation on that subject was Richard Linklater's "Boyhood", you know "12 years in the making" was I fooled? That this series is so unknown is beyond me.

So, I didn't hesitate one second and started my journey with the documentary and now, I've just finished the 1964 episode. I can't say I remembered all the names but I identified the "archetypes"! a lonely child from an isolated village, a little tough one who likes fighting and jumping all around, three kids from the upper class who certainly talk better than many adults today, one girl who practice ballet and is quite disciplined, other girls who are more playful etc. But I wasn't exactly taking notes, I just let the flow of images operate and I'll leave that up for the next chapters to put the right names on the right faces. It's got to be a slow process and we have plenty of time (five decades is quite a lot, isn't it?)

Now, watching the film, I noticed how not so different kids have always behaved, they are from my father's generation (he was 9 in 1964) but listen to them talking, listen to the boys whining about girls constantly screaming, or girls about boys immaturely fighting, listen to them talking about rich people or the lack of education; the vocabulary might change from one generation to another, or place to place, but the core of childhood is there. Childhood is defined in very simple terms, there's no room for complexity, you fight to express disagreement, you play to have fun, you work because you have to, you sleep at specific times, you respect the authority or you don't, but each department of life doesn't leave you with many choices. Yet, there's no doubt that childhood is perhaps the most crucial part of one's life, the one that hits it or breaks it. Some would say youth but teenage behavior is also forged by childhood memories (I expect the next chapter to cover that).

So you better not ruin your childhood, and the maxim about "men at seven" is true. It has been demonstrated by psychologists that after six or seven, you can't change the core personality of your kid, Daniel Goldman's "Emotional Intelligence" dedicates a whole chapter for fear and shyness, explaining that you can cure a child from his insecurities before the age of six. And speaking from my own experience, I can say my personality started at seven, I started reading comic books, playing games, drawing much better than my friends, being aroused by the artistic and intellectual stuff, it was in 1989, the year where I also started wearing glasses. At six, I was painfully shy but I could triumph over it, but at seven, I started to behave like I would usually do. Some parts were accidental; others under one's influence. See, my mother was a teacher in my school so the day I wanted to have fun with boys and pick on girls, my teacher took me and said that she would tell my mother if I did that again. I feared the authority, I couldn't help it. I became a "good boy" (sigh).

But I'm not saying I enjoyed the film because it echoed my own memories, but because it plays like the perfect set-up to a series of discoveries, some you know to be happy and some sad. The film shows kids from rich or poor neighborhoods, public or private school, boys', girls' or mixed schools, cities or farms, different backgrounds, different personalities and different prospects. One wants to be a missionary to civilize Africa, some know they will leave school at the age of 15, some girls wants only two children, a kid doesn't want any. I didn't know how to feel because they were so young, I was like "why are you closing so many doors, life is so full of opportunities" but maybe it is not, maybe it's true that the die are cast from the start and it's only out of a defensive mechanism that we try to set ourselves goals, and the more definite vision a kid has about the future, the happier he or she will be. I don't know how true it is, I just expect the next episodes to come with a load of surprises, to prove me wrong or tell me something I didn't know... and I naturally wish them the best.

(On a side note, the film was made in 1964 at the peak of the Beatle-mania, and I can't resist quoting John Lennon: "Life is what happens when you make plans", these kids talk a lot about life and future, but they'll soon discover that life is a series of random stuff happening for better or worse, they're called circumstances, they're too young to realize it. At seven, I didn't either. At least, the rules are the same for everybody.)

"Seven Up!" is the forty minute documentary from 1964 that stands as a prologue for the most forward thinking documentary series of all-time. The film brings together a group of surprisingly articulate seven-year-olds from a variety of backgrounds in England. Through a number of questions posed to each of the children, the audience gets the opportunity to get to know the world through these children's eyes, and often presumably through the parent's eyes and therefore only quoted through these children. Personalities more than perspectives ring through the strongest in this first film, and the glimpse at the education system circa 1964 is intriguing. Unfortunately, as "characters" that will ultimately be seen for another forty years to come, the thick accents of some of them make for a rough start. All in all this is important cinema regardless.

I've read about this series elsewhere and was always curious to see it. Thanks to an internet movie rental chain I've now seen 7 Up and 7 + 7, and the rest of the series is queued up and ready to ship. I can't wait.

Viewers who are not used to the various English accents will likely be struggling to understand what some of the kids are saying in the first movie, 7 Up, but it's a short film, and deserves repeated viewing. My vague memories of previous reviews of this series suggest that this may be the most lighthearted of the series. While it is fascinating for many reasons, it is also vastly enjoyable just for the experience of the 7 year-olds' high spirits and humor.

It's jarring when you get your first look at 7 + 7, which revisits most of the kids 7 years later. Their individuality, only hinted at in the first movie, is obvious in these now-14 year-olds. As a parent I feel that familiar combination of the sadness at the loss of the child and anticipation of the future adult. Here we run through this in a matter of minutes.

As it stands now, the series goes as far as 42 Up, somehow turning these frolicking little kids into my peers in the space of a few hours. (I've always been a sucker for special effects.) This series is unlike anything that came before it, and while a quick scan of titles suggests that it's been imitated since, I'm waiting to see what happens to this particular group.