Apted: "Do you think you are Mad?"
Neil: 'Oh I don't think it, I know it. I, um..I don't like to use the word mad..I think most people are mad here really. But then I think it's a mad world. I remember working in London 12 years ago and just walking through the city and they were digging up drains and the cranes were knocking down buildings. And there were cars trying to get down narrow, impossible alleys and having to reverse out of them. Police were doing all kinds of things and I thought, this world is just mad, you know? This world is just mad."
Documentary Classics: The "Up" Series is a Perpetual Fascination
I think those first three installments are the real story, the worthy classics, and everything since has been supplementary for curiosity sake. Never mind that the original film acknowledged these were the union leader and business executive in he year 2000, with 21 Up they’re already adults and for the most part on the tracks of family and career that they’ll remain in throughout the next five films (2000 fell between 42 Up and 49 Up). Sure, there are plenty of major life changes in 28 Up and the rest, including divorces and uprooted settings and new jobs and such. And the shocking biographical continuation for Neil is by itself enough to keep us coming back to the series. But much of it can also be very repetitive and superfluous.
Eventually, the films also become overpopulated with characters. While a few of the original subjects dropped out entirely and others are absent for whole installments only to return later, the focus also winds up extending to include spouses and children, the latter becoming like a new generation of the series, whose lives we watch unfold and updated much like their parents. In a recent Guardian article on the series, producer Claire Lewis was quoted as wondering what happens when the participants start dying off. Perhaps they could continue with their offspring?
But Apted, who is obviously older than the participants, might very well be the first to go, and despite previous things I’d heard about him refusing to allow the series to continue without him, he is now saying it ought to keep going even if he’s no longer “above ground.” As frustratingly pretentious as he is in the films, though, Apted would be hard to replace if the series was to truly remain what it is. Could the project find someone who not only could ask so frankly about things he or she presumptuously believed to be failures and disappointments for the subjects but that could also do so with those participants’ forgiveness? Apted can surely get away with some of his questions and phrasing due to the fact these people have known him for 49 years and are familiar enough with him to both shrug some of it off and find it easy to confront him on camera, depending on the offense.
Some of the fun that comes with watching the Up Series is asking yourself whether you could stand to have your own life followed for decades and decades as these people have. Many of them admit to thinking of the project as being a nuisance or a “poison pill” or something that’s dreadful yet hard to let go. And they’ve become minor celebrities, though mostly just after each new film has aired, and there are pros and cons to that. John, one of those participants who are most critical of the series appears in the films simply for the attention he’s able to divert towards a charity that he runs.
Strangely, they all imply that the series doesn’t influence their life decisions, which would be the hardest thing for me to deny. How could someone not feel the need to have something to show for themselves, or at least maintain an image, with the awareness that every seven years viewers around the world will be tuned in to see how you’ve changed? I’d be dieting just before each anniversary, at the very least. At times I think Tony has been inspired by the attention of the series to improve his status, but he’s also something of a sinner, so maybe he’s not always conscious of his life being so out in the open.
Another fun exercise is to rewatch the series every seven years, when you’re the age of the participants in one of the films. I first went through them when 49 Up came out on DVD and I was 29 years old, and without thinking much of it at the time I had rated 28 Up higher than the rest in my Netflix queue. I believe I was mostly taken with Neil’s story, especially since I had just returned to college after having dropped out ten years prior. He's likely the most identifiable to newer fans given that more and more people are taking longer and longer to find themselves, let alone a career and family.
Well, recently I watched the seven films again in anticipation of 56 Up, and as I’m now 35 I was particularly interested in 35 Up. For one thing, I definitely don’t feel as old as they all look in that film. For another, I feel myself weighing my own life’s achievements against those of the participants, just as if I were one of the subjects and had something to prove to the world. And I feel like I need to do more before 42, at which point I’ll likely revisit the series again, whether or not it continues with a 63 Up.
The first seven installments of the Up Series are currently available on DVD from First Run Features and they're also currently streaming via Netflix Watch Instantly. The first of three parts to 56 Up premieres tonight on ITV in the UK. A U.S. release date is unknown.
