63 Up

"I mean, why are we who we are? Let’s get down to basics. The characteristics that make up who you are, you don’t have very much to do with that...I analyzed this once, in fact, and I came up with four elements of who we are. The first three are DNA, circumstance, and environment. By that, I mean the circumstances of your life. You’re born in the middle of Africa or you’re born in New Jersey. Environment means your parents showed love for you or they didn’t. DNA is DNA, and that provides inclination or is at least a factor in terms of your inclination. Whether you realize that inclination is another story. But the fourth thing, and in some ways, it’s the smallest part of who you are and the most important, is willpower. And that plays a funny role. That, I think, determines a lot of where you end up, and you can call that ambition in some ways, but willpower is more than ambition. It’s a certain drive to realize one’s potential, to be somebody not necessarily famous, but to realize your potential. I don’t care if you’re a carpenter, you still want to build that perfect house."

—Little Steven Van Zandt

 

With 63 Up we have the latest, and perhaps the last, entry in this great and important series. The Up series has meant a great deal to me personally; it is certainly the foremost project ever undertaken in the way of longitudinal documentary film. I suppose you could even consider it precursive of reality TV, albeit an immensely dignified version of it—but don't hate it for that any more than you'd hate Frederick Wiseman. The show has been many things over the years: a "labor of love," as critic David Thomson put it; an ongoing portrait of England; an exercise in mutual exploitation and sadomasochistic self-scrutiny; and, finally and in my view, "one of the greatest works of art of our time," as the New York Times magazine's Gideon Lewis-Kraus recently called it.  

"And the doors swing back and forward from the past into the present," as Elvis Costello once sang, and now here they are again—these ordinary, extraordinary men and women who have been growing up in public for so long. (And what can that have been like?) Michael Apted, a young research assistant, met them in 1963, when they were seven years old. That's when Apted helped select the original group of children, culled from across Britain's social spectrum (but mainly from its polarities) to be on Seven Up!, a bombshell special directed by Paul Almond (a Canadian) and made for the Granada TV program World In Action. 

 

The film's original agenda was, frankly, avowedly socialist. (That never put me off, as I'm rather sympathetic to socialist ideals myself.) To put it vulgarly, they wanted to prove that class is destiny. As I've written in the past, the program was meant to show that the '60s hadn't broken down Britain’s class system at all. Those born into the upper-class still started out way ahead, and would likely go on to lead the lives largely laid out for them. For the children born into the working-class, on the other hand, the future was up in the air. What was certain, however, was that they would never jump the track determined by their class. Here, the narrator proclaimed at the end of Seven Up! we have a glimpse of the “CEO and the shop steward of the year 2000...Give me the child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.”

 

Apted has documented the unfolding lives of "the kids," or the “Uppers,” as he affectionately refers to them, every seven years since. Each new film is always a bit of a family reunion, for them as well as for us, the audience. What's more, each new movie interweaves footage from prior installments, creating a rich tapestry of life.

 

As "the kids" grew up, we watched them grapple with all the great themes: love and faith, dreams and work, death and illness, happiness. The meaning of life, I suppose, or the lack thereof. We watched their children arrive, then their grandchildren. The sense of mortality increased as the years passed, which I suppose is both impossibly sad and natural—and the acceptance of which is somehow a form of grace, too.  

 

The first installment of the series I saw when it hit Chicago theaters was 49 Up, some 14 years ago. I'd become enchanted with the series on home video at some point in the preceding years. Watching the last three films on the big screen, I realized that my current age roughly lined up with where "the kids" were two films ago. For example, I'll be 49 in a few months, so while watching 63, it the flashbacks from 49 that held up a mirror to my present stage of life.

 

Apted asks the questions you'd hope for from an Up film in 2019.

  

For example, you'd want to know the impact of Uber and ride-sharing on Tony, the East Ender who famously wanted to be a jockey, and who once had a “photo finish” in a race against Lester Piggott. He became a cabbie in his twenties, doing "the knowledge"—the infamously difficult test for London cabbies, where one essentially has to memorize the entirety of London's street map. He still runs, and when the film cuts from 63-year-old Tony jogging to that seven-year-old boy who was always scrambling and climbing up and down everything, we see the child in the man and the man in the child.  You're curious as to how he voted on Brexit, though you have your suspicions. As with many of the other Uppers, though, his answer to that question might tweak your assumptions, even as it confirms them. (I know I was relatively pleased with his answer). Likewise, when Tony mentions that he now lives in a retirement community of "traditional" East Enders, we know what he means by that, but we like him too much—or at least I do—to ascribe to him any truly sinister views. (We know that London's East End had been a working-class enclave when Tony was a boy, and then it became an immigrant neighborhood.) 

 

Speaking of which, we might recall Bruce, the little boy we met at the militaristic boarding school, whose fondest wish was to see his daddy (who was off being a solider in Rhodesia). As a young man, he became a teacher of immigrant children in the East End—in fact, at Tony's old school! I was pleased with how well Bruce and his family are doing. If he now teaches at an elite "public school," one can't begrudge him. He put in years of service to the community. 

 

Symon is usually filmed in conjunction with Paul, his friend from the children's home/orphanage. Symon’s sunny wife Vienetta is once again a welcome presence in 63. (I always think she'd get on well with my Karolyn: both are strong-willed, high-spirited and good-humored.) Paul moved to Australia as a boy; he is still happy there with Susan, his wife since 1978. For this installment, Symon and Vienetta journey for the first time to Australia to visit Paul and Susan.  

 

John was selected to as a representative of the "posh" boys. He appears in the films these days mainly to raise the profile of Friends of Bulgaria, a UK charity providing humanitarian aid to that nation, much of it earmarked for disabled children. I always liked John: here, I thought, was the type of conservative with whom I could be friends. His stance on Brexit is quite sound: he sensibly voted "Remain." (This issue, he comments, was much too complicated to ever be put to a simple "yes/no" vote.) John always rather resented Apted's portrayal of him as a poster boy for privilege, maintaining that it did not come close to reflecting his reality. (And when you think of it, isn't there something vaguely insulting about seeing a person as merely an instance of his or her class)? Interestingly, as the Times reports, John will not speak to Apted on camera; instead, his interviews have been conducted for decades by longtime series producer Claire Lewis.

 

John was the one who, at age seven, one-upped his friend Andrew: not only did John read the Financial Times, like Andrew, but the Observer as well. Andrew was the little fellow who proclaimed “I’m going to Charterhouse, and after that Trinity Hall, Cambridge." He did those things, and he seems to have enjoyed raising his family and his career as a solicitor; today, he likes to putter in his altogether gorgeous gardens (he's quite a landscaper). Decades ago, Andrew's wife Jane memorably described herself when she said that Andrew hadn’t married a “haughty deb,” but a “goody Yorkshire lass.” She still seems so today, all these years later. Andrew and Jane seem quite happy.

 

As the kids aged, we watched them lose parents, and even partners, but now, Lynn has become the first of the "kids" to die, having passed away in 2013. (She's long had a health condition to do with the arteries in her brain.) She grew up to be a librarian, reading stories to special-needs children, until her program was put to the chopping block. Hers, to my way of thinking, was a life well-lived. I went in not knowing Lynn had died; when this was revealed, I felt my insides churn with what can only be described as an aching grief. Tears streamed down my face. 

  

  The film’s poetic symbol was always that famous composition, repeated every seven years, of the three working-class East End girls, Jackie, Lynn and Sue, holding an enlarged photograph of their younger selves, who are in turn gathered around an image of their younger selves, and so on. Now, Jackie and Sue must meet without Lynn.

 

We catch up with Jackie on the Norfolk coast. If, over the years, Apted's relationship with the Uppers has become part of the story, it is perhaps in Jackie's feisty segments where that relationship is most acute. (She feels things deeply; Lewis-Kraus made her the focus of his NYT magazine profile.) To series regulars, her segments are known as at once the most combative and the the most fiercely loyal towards Apted and the program (her "family," in her words). She's getting on quite well, despite being disabled by her arthritis, and still giving Apted a hard time for never really getting the picture about women. She's dealt with so much loss: her partner, Ian, died in an awful car accident, then Ian's mum, then her dad. We get the sense that the Up project has meant the world to Jackie, in particular (and to Tony, as well).

  

In the dales of North West England, we catch up with Neil. His was always the saddest story, in a way, the one that seemed to disprove the very thesis of the series. Of all the Uppers, he is perhaps the only one in whom the happy child he once was is not at all recognizable in the adult. Still, Neil has seemed to find peace over the years. I was gratified to see that he still represents his village as a Liberal Democrat on the district council; that he finds fulfillment in his work as a lay minister, and peace at his country house in France. (He has a wife now, as well, but they were estranged at the time of filming). Neil wandered for so long—at some points in the past he appeared, frankly, suicidal. (Over the years, some observers have credited the Up programs themselves with keeping him alive.) I was happy to see that Neil is still out there, making his way forward the best he can. Best of all, he still has the anger, the fire in the belly. Of all the Uppers, it is Neil who speaks most passionately against Britain's awful rightwing government. 

 

Peter, who came from the same suburban, middle-class background as Neil (the same suburb, in fact), is back again, after having dropped out for the many years between 28 and 56. (As a young man, his remarks about the cruelties of Thatcherism got him in trouble with the awful rightwing British press.) Peter speaks in more measured tones about Brexit, but still leaves little doubt about where he stands. Once again, he is here mainly to publicize his Americana band, The Good Intentions.

  

I wept, as well, when I learned that Nick is dying. Recall that Nick was the farmer's son who got his "Oxbridge" degree, then moved to the U.S. to settle in Wisconsin as an professor in nuclear physics and engineering. He tells us he has terminal throat cancer. I'll always think of him as seven-year-old Nicholas, walking beneath the jutting cliffs of his rural home in the Yorkshire Dales. When we see that footage again in this film, Nick says, “I’m still the same little kid, really. I think all of us are.”

  

It's possible I fell into the original vision of the Up series because it proved my politics. However, in that NYT profile, Lewis-Kraus cites a passage Apted wrote about "an epiphany" he had around 1985: "I realized for the first time, after 20 years on the project, that I really hadn’t made a political film at all. What I had seen as a significant statement about the English class system was in fact a humanistic document about the real issues of life.” It was this vision I fell into as my own views evolved. What I learned from the Up series is that any time you generalize about people, from the left or from the right, based on class or party or anything else, you're likely making a mistake. (A statement that is itself a generalization, I realize). In 2020, I struggle to hold onto that humanistic vision every day, and I don't always succeed. It's not easy, in our polarized age. 

 

Apted's voice is noticeably slower this time: he sounds tired. As always, the show is about "the kids," never about Apted, but his aging is an underlying theme, as well. He was 78 during the making of 63 Up. What's more, we learn from reading the Times profile that between the making 56 and 63, Apted's oldest son died of colon cancer, at the age of 47. I found myself almost wishing this time around they would break with ceremony and turn the cameras on Apted—that the interviewer would finally become the interviewee. However, the Up series is not about to get that meta. 

 

  There's a tone in 63 of summing up. It is quite possible there will not be another entry in the series, though I'm not quite ready for it be over. I hope there is one more film—thereby making it a 7 to 70 document—but if this is not to be, then 63 makes a fine ending. At the age of 63, our Uppers still have hope and energy, but it's not so much on their own behalf, as it was at, say, age 28. Rather, the repositories for their thoughts of the future are now their kids and grandkids. The question of who they are, of where they will end up, is largely settled—and in fact may have felt settled for some time now. So maybe this is a good time to end.

 

The question remains just as tantalizing as it ever was, though: was the question settled all along—that is, was it settled at age seven? 

  

As always, we end with footage of the children’s "very special" day out in London, from the original Seven Up!. We know we will hear a recitation of the Jesuit maxim, “Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man,” followed by those oddly discordant chords on the soundtrack, which always seem to augur impending doom—never more so than in 2020, given the direction Britain is headed. It please me that all "the kids" are relatively happy. They all turned out quite well, don't you think? Like you and I, they did the best they could.   

 

When we look at the Up films, we are really watching for the changes in ourselves, and in our loved ones. In that sense, the series holds up a mirror that transcends culture. It will reflect us for as long as we look—for as long as we ponder just what magical combination of circumstance, environment, DNA, and willpower go into making any life. From a handful of specific people, from a specific time and place, Apted and his "kids" created a universal, uniquely strange experience born out of memory and the cycle of life, where time collapses and present, past, and future exist all at once.

Rating: ****1/2

Key to ratings:

***** (essential viewing)
**** (excellent)
*** (worth a look)
** (forgettable)
* (rubbish!!)