Film
Seitz, Michael H.
FILM Michael H. Seitz See How They Grow It tells us something about the state of the movie business that the two most compelling films released in the United States this year are documentaries....
...The startling effect of Apted's project resembles that produced by time-lapse photography of the growth of a plant: It enables the viewer to observe a process of development that usually escapes us because it takes place over such a drawn-out period of time...
...But they tend to entertain ambitions that are either drab and mundane ("I am going to work in Woolworth's," says one girl), or patently unrealistic (two boys want to be astronauts...
...The choice of this age group was suggested by the Jesuit claim, "Give me a child until he is seven and I will give you the man...
...But the others have either become embittered or have resigned themselves to lives without promise of change or growth...
...He deplores his own education because "public schools perpetuate class society...
...This is the case with Simon, the only black subject, who believes a black man can get along in Britain so long as he isn't pushy...
...The wealthy kids, on the other hand, are more precocious and deliberate in their manner (one little twit declares, "I read my newspaper [The Financial Times] because I have shares in it, and I know every day what the shares are...
...Similar resignation seems to pervade the interviews with Jackie, Lynn, and Sue, three old school chums who at twenty-eight are a bit dowdy and overweight, work at lower-echelon clerical jobs, and have been thoroughly drained of the vitality they displayed at seven...
...And Suzi, who at twenty-one seemed something of a nervous wreck, a school dropout who had no interest in marriage and thought she could never live in the country, is at twenty-eight the contentedly married mother of two, living on a small country estate...
...Apted captures both corroborations and contradictions that come with the passage of time, and some class-determined patterns eventually emerge...
...The most poignant life chronicle is that of Neil, who at seven seemed to be the most pert, extroverted, and imaginative of these children...
...At twenty-one, he is a sullen casual laborer...
...The once exuberant lower-class subjects have generally fared less well...
...28 UP provides revealing perspectives on the subjects' development...
...Most of the young children interviewed in 7 UP are remarkably unselfconscious and candid...
...One exception is Nicholas, a farmer's son, who went to Oxford, married a strong-minded young woman, and is now doing research on nuclear fusion while teaching at the University of Wisconsin...
...At seven they are already more disciplined than their lower-class contemporaries, following a regimen of homework, dinner, and early to bed after school, while poorer children spend more time at play and get to sleep later...
...They are star-tlingly self-assured, and their academic careers have been precisely mapped out for them: a prep school, renowned public (meaning private) school, Oxford or Cambridge...
...He has worked for years in the freezer room of a sausage factory and is "not really interested in moving up the social scale...
...All of those from privileged homes are, at twenty-eight, relatively accomplished, satisfied with their careers, and apparently content with their personal lives...
...He had been rejected by Oxford, dropped out of the public University of Leeds, suffers from severe depression (which has never been treated), and says, "I can't see any immediate future at all...
...One of these is Shoah, reviewed last month in The Progressive, and the other is the combined program of 7 UP and 28 UP produced by Britain's Granada television...
...He feels, however, that he had no choice but to emigrate, since Britain provided him with no opportunity to put his superb education to use...
...But Bruce, who twenty-one years earlier spoke of "going to Africa and trying to teach people who are not civilized to be more or less good," has become a socialist, lives in a modest flat, and finds fulfillment teaching immigrant children in an East End school...
...Apted, who went on to direct such dramatic features as Coal Miner's Daughter and Gorky Park, returned to film interviews with the original subjects at seven-year intervals, and these have been edited into 28 UP—a wonderfully revealing and, I believe, unprecedented portrayal of individual development within Britain's relatively rigid class system...
...The film was shot in 1963...
...7 UP, directed by Paul Almond with assistance from Michael Apted, is a forty-minute work that depicts the interests, attitudes, and aspirations of fourteen seven-year-olds from diverse social and economic backgrounds...
...At twenty-eight he is a gaunt, spent derelict, unemployed for three years and subsisting on the dole...
...John, the most outrageously arrogant of the bunch, has become a chancellor and political reactionary, railing against the "subversive elements introducing invidious class attitudes" into England...
...But there are notable differences among them: The working-class kids, except for those from broken homes, seem more exuberant and energetic...
...The application of this technique to human growth within a defined social context produces an extraordinarily fascinating human document...
Vol. 49 • December 1985 • No. 12
