56 Up

Since 1964 Michael Apted has followed the lives of 14 British children. He has interviewed them for a new film every seven years. Apted was a researcher on the first film, which was directed by Canadian Paul Almond, but he has directed the last seven. With 56 Up Apted confirms the series’ status as a remarkably insightful, moving, often poetic, chronicle of the times.

The stated intention is to prove the Jesuit adage, “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” But as the upper class John here claims, the show set out to prove that England is “still in the grasp of a Dickensian class system,” which he claims was not true in ’64 and is even less true now. His friend Andrew’s view is borne out by most of the stories here. A harsh stratification remains in force, but it is primarily economic, not social.  

The most heartening stories involve the two boys from the children’s home. At 7 Paul was a heartrending victim of bullying, inexperience, and hopelessness. His wife Sue was attracted by his “helplessness” and the relationship survives, leading to two successful children. Now Paul joins Sue in running an old folks’ home. The mixed race Symon seemed more confident than Paul as a child. He gave up his dream of being a film star and his plan to be an accountant, ending up a forklift operator near Heathrow. Symon has two children from his first wife, five from his second, two from his current. Symon is immensely proud that his son has won an apprenticeship with Proctor and Gamble. But his real achievement derives from the close relationship he and his Vienetta have with the more than 65 young people they have taken on as foster parents, some brought straight from the airport. Paul and Symon have found familial success. As if foreseeing the two boys’ need for their own home, when the seven-year-olds were taken to an adventure playground in the first film, while the others frolicked Paul and Symon built a house. Now they’ve built homes.

The need for family security permeates the chronicle. The several East Enders have grown into lives of primarily domestic satisfaction despite their financial insecurity, especially the three girl-friends. Sue never went to college but now administers the university’s graduate law studies program. Lynne has found some social mobility in becoming first a mobile librarian, then a special needs librarian at Bethnell Green. Jackie has four kids from three relationships and enjoys a support from her three sons, in the face of her ex’s death in an accident and his mother’s fatal cancer. In contrast to Sue’s career success, Lynne and Jackie are paralyzed by the economic collapse. For Jackie, “If David Cameron can get me a job, I’ll do it!”: With Lynne and a daughter laid off, husband Ross has to continue well past retirement age. For Lynne, the government “hasn’t a clue what they’re doing,” not since Tony Blair moved Labour to the Right. There is no justice or logic when the cutbacks end her inspired work with the afflicted. 

The spirited mischievous Tony, who yearned to be a jockey, finds contentment driving a cab -- and pride in bringing his son into that service. Despite some errant ways Tony was saved by his marriage to Debby, with whom he enjoys three successful children, some grandchildren and a holiday home in Spain. Having foreseen Britain’s economic collapse in the last episode, Tony is now concerned about the changing social landscape in London. When he revisits his boyhood settings he is disturbed by the influx of immigrants -- though he denies any racism. His delight in the new Olympics facilities closes the film on an optimistic note, for London as the family scenes have for the most part done for the characters. 

The driven farmboy Nick and the laid back landed gentry Suzy both survived boarding school to make full lives. Nick left his one-room country schoolhouse to read Physics at Oxford, then enjoyed an exceptional academic career in the States. As an Oxford classmate remarked, “I don’t associate intelligence with your accent.” That would have encouraged his flight to America if Prime Minister Thatcher’s strangulation of the British university system had not. Nick was left by his first wife but found a successful marriage with his second, though her academic post takes her five hours away. Suzy lost her cynicism when she married Rupert and is pleased to provide her children with the warm family life she lacked. 

She and Nick reject the film series for shallowness, passing off brief snippets and soundbites in place of circumspect analysis. But as Nick remarks, “It’s not an accurate picture of me. But it’s a picture of someone.”  The truth of these characters is not a matter of their actual minds and lives but of their type in their times. Though real people are filmed they function as characters in a fiction, as metaphors, representative of a wider significance. “It’s a picture of Everymen,” Nick adds, “how they change.”  

The two boyhood chums from Liverpool represent a geographic underclass, with opposite results. Both are outsiders who accordingly developed political and social awareness. Peter read History at London, became a teacher, then dropped out of teaching and the Seven Up series after his criticism of Thatcher in 28 Up provoked scabrous personal attacks in the press. Now Peter returns, to promote his folk music band, The Good Intentions. 

Less in harmony is the doomed Neil, who dreamt of Oxford, dropped out of Aberdeen and has drifted through a life of mental illness, homelessness, penury and solitude. Apted repeats an old shot of the seven-year-old Neil dancing carefree in his undershirt with his dorm lads. In 49 Up Apted used that shot as a visual for Neil’s reflection on the profound beauty of a butterfly exercising its wings. (Continually this series reminds us that in its shooting and selection, its planning and its discovery, documentary has the capacity to soar off into poetry.)  Alas, though Neil now serves as a Liberal Democrat councillor and as a lay minister, he has been unable to establish a paying job -- or maintain a relationship. If he feels anger at his situation it’s only as proof of a wider issue, that so many doors have been closed against so many.    

Now to the series’ privileged characters. Bruce is yet another boarding school victim, dramatically isolated from his father, who in his mature years overcomes his emotional stultification to find a wife, colleague Penny, with whom he has two spirited and close sons, without foregoing his amateur cricket. As a child Bruce repeated the arrogant mantra of the missionary. He began as a common school math teacher but grows into a venerable Independent school, where he teaches the gifted rather than the disadvantaged. Earlier he argued that the public school system perpetuates the social inequality. Bruce abandoned that principle and has brought his family into Quakerism, which emphasizes social equality and eschews the uniform. 

The issue of class privilege is concentrated in the appearances of the three young elitists. At 7 John reads The Observer and The Financial Times, expects to attend Westminster and Cambridge and to read law.  Andrew reads the Financial Times and expects to attend Charterhouse, then Cambridge for law. Both realize those paths. (Their colleague, the handsome young man on the right, seems apart from the others, shifts into jeans and sweaters, and dropped out of the series immediately.) 

Andrew marries a less wealthy country lass, Andrea, who gives him a stable family life with two sons, a 200-year-old empty barn converted into a manor, and a quiet home. Only now does she reveal some evidence she has been held back in her marriage. It’s too late for her to find something to do outside the home; she suffers what Andrew calls a lack of self-confidence. There was a personal price when she married “up.” 

The film’s richest irony derives from QC John, who oddly is the only family person in the group without children. Even at 7, he and Andrew spoke with the plumiest aristocratic mien, both in vocabulary and in attitude. If schools didn’t charge, why, they’d be overrun with the... masses. But now John turns upon director Apted, accusing him of fraudulently misrepresenting him. Far from being the privileged aristocrat he appeared, John lost his father at 9, had a hardworking mother, and only got to Oxford on a scholarship. But he was thus characterized not by that omission so much as by his own words and positions. John made himself seem born into privilege. So, too, his belief in consensus politics and his fear for the industrialization of the countryside bracket a shot of his foxhunt.  

But there’s another twist. Our Reluctant Aristocrat married Claire, the daughter of a former ambassador to Bulgaria. And for all John’s plummy Britishness, his great great grandfather was the freed Bulgaria’s first prime minister. John speaks Bulgarian. Moreover, he has devoted himself to campaigns for medical and educational aid for that country. He excuses Apted’s “fraud” because an American director was so moved by 49 Up that he made a huge contribution to the Bulgarian project. Now, is that kind of social responsibility and such use of one’s wealth and station not precisely the redeeming value of the aristocracy? John’s personal background may not have borne out the class to which he pretended, but his adult dedication does -- and redeems him. 

Apted is 72. We hope he has been cultivating a successor who will -- if necessary -- carry on to  bring these fascinating stories of contemporary Everymen to fulfillment. Next, if memory serves, would be 63 Up....