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49 Up

By Alexander Kafka

The POV documentary series, as part of its 20th anniversary, is presenting the latest in the landmark British 'Up' project. Director Michael Apted has been dropping in on a diverse group of people every seven years since 1964. This latest chapter, which showed in theaters last year, is a bittersweet visit to our old pals in various states of middle-age stress, puzzlement, pudginess, and contentment. Interestingly, though, the series finds itself in the same mixed, muddled state.

That is, under-education, money issues, relationship trouble, hubris, and so on are on intriguing exhibit here. Age brings ugly surprises of one sort or another no matter how wisely one lives or what resources one is born with. But fate has traced the life arcs not only of Apted's subjects, but of his documentary approach as well. In the YouTube era, a director forcing himself civilly but sternly into these lives seems as idiosyncratic as anything Apted's subjects have been up to. It's all very "old media."

This original reality TV programming looks not obsolete but strangely vintage in the age of web cams and quirky, lively authorial documentary makers like Michael Moore and Morgan Spurlock. It's like a classic album on vinyl that the afficionado would dubiously insist doesn't have the same soul on CD.

The original Granada TV "World in Action" program that started it all looks, in retrospect, a little cheesy, but at least it acknowledges the possibility of fun and hope as well as tragedy large and small. Is that an aesthetic luxury that can only be afforded with children? The series, over the years, has lost some of that simple human glow in its self-conscious semi-sociological seriousness. Part of that, no doubt, reflects the subjects' loss of innocence. But how much of it, I wonder, reflects the director's?

While most of Apted's original subjects have hung in there all these years, some have begged off, and some remain, it seems, mostly to give Apted a hard time. For instance, Jackie, one of the East End girls, has now moved to Scotland, has a second marriage, and lives on disability because of debilitating arthritis. She accuses Apted of being judgmental and rude, and we're inclined to agree with her. She objects, most specifically, to questions he'd asked her when she was a young woman about whether she was too young to get into a serious romantic relationship. But what bothers me more is his deadpan narrative updates about childhood ambitions and dreams warped by the material world if not shattered altogether. Those, and the whole slightly gray caste and tempo of the program, come across as rather arch and disgusted. Like Jackie, I'd think real hard about letting Apted, like a grim cinematic cicada, into my living room every seven years.

There's a similar stickiness to his interactions with Paul and Simon, two men we met originally when they were boys in a children's home. Paul, now living in Australia, still wrestles with low self-esteem and at one point, it's suggested, a more substantial depression. Apted focuses on those elements and what admittedly sounds like not the most invigorating job at a factory. But he seems to give short shrift to Paul's resilience--he runs marathons, and dotes on his wife, children, and grandchildren.

Apted asks Simon whether he'd hoped for more than his job fork-lifting cargo at Heathrow Airport. OK, so yes, a theme--maybe the theme--of the series, is class, but Apted's scolding disappointment is palpable, and palpably inappropriate. I mean, really--what if some condescending bloke barged in on even the astonishingly accomplished and prolific Apted and asked him disapprovingly to account for a dog of a film like "Extreme Measures"? The world needs efficient air cargo workers as fervently as it does even very fine directors, I would argue after recent summer travel.

Though he makes Tony (the charismatic failed former jockey) and his wife Debbie sweat some marital trouble, he allows them, once they've left Apted's Steadicam confessional, to bask in the sun of their second home in Spain with their kids and grandkids. Amusingly, though Tony, a cab driver and occasional actor, is something of a bigoted nationalist and East End nostalgist, you can't quite get worked up about it because you're too busy enjoying the irony of his situation. He's building this new life in a pub-pocked colony of realty-obsessed Englishmen--his own kind, as he'd defensively put it--but has to go to Spain to do it!

The upper-crusters have turned out nicely too, though Apted, of course, has to verbally spank them a bit for not all becoming soup-kitchen managers or something of the sort. The director's tone, again, indicates that Bruce, for instance, didn't put in enough time for Apted's taste teaching math in Bangladesh and in the East End. And shame on him for landing at the lovely looking 1,000-year-old St. Alban's School, marrying, and enjoying his children and cricket games. The only thing worse than being lower class and uneducated is being rich and educated.

Some others:

Lynn, a children's librarian, has done remarkable work with disabled clients, and has a loving husband who wants no part of Apted's series. But she's also suffered serious health problems and budget cuts are about to take her job from her. Quite heartbreaking.

Nick the farmer's son didn't have the success he'd hoped either as a physics researcher or with his first family. But he's a funny, self-effacing college prof in Wisconsin sharing a new, vibrant romance with an education professor in Minnesota.

The sweet-faced, articulate Neil, once homeless and even more doubtful than we were about his sanity, pulled himself together and started a career in local politics in the city. Now he's found a more soothing space and pace in the country, and is still involved in politics, as well as the church. He still looks a bit haunted, but like he's at least in fruitful negotiations with his ghosts.

It's that kind of resilience that, in this way or that, is emblematic of "49 Up." But though Apted directed the film, it's not clear he realizes that. I relish the "Up" series because it's brilliant and the only one of its kind. I'd relish it more, though, if Apted would at least consider giving that resilience the principal role it has more than earned.

There's still time. He has said he hopes to film "56-Up." He'll be 72. No doubt, he and his subjects will have suffered some misfortunes in the interim. But I hope that he doesn't let those slings and arrows steal the show.

Alexander C. Kafka edits rokovoko.blogspot.com a zine of arts, living, and opinion. He has written about books and the arts for The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, The American Prospect, and many other publications.

Article Source: Alexander Kafka
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49 Up

The Up Series is one of the first reality type TV documentary programs. 49up is still proof of that privilege and class are still advantages as much in 2006 as they were when the series was first shown in 1963.