28 Up

28 Up

“I’ve composed the theme of my life from my earliest childhood.” William Wordsworth.

Somewhere among my belongings, I have pictures taken when I was a child. In one, a solemn, round-faced little boy looks out at the camera and for a second I know that he is me and I am him, but it has no reality. There is no connection that comes to mind and thinking deeper about time passing gets me scared as well.

Watching Michael Apted’s documentary “28 Up,” however, always filled me with the greatest sense of awe: time moves on and people remain the same individuals only in essence they become different things in their lives. From child to adult who becomes someone new over all those years but still contains the same atoms and molecules and fears and gifts as were packed into the baby.

Back in 1977 this film started as a British TV documentary. Michael Apted was given an assignment to interview some seven-year old from various social classes, races or backgrounds around Britain just asking them what they liked most in their lives. Seven years later when they were 14 years old Apted found them again interviewed each one of them separately for an hour. He did this again at 21, then again at 28; thus this movie will oscillate back and forth through our past looking at the same people as children, teenagers young adults now approaching thirty with caution.

We have always known that the motion picture is a time machine.

Our children will recognize John Wayne’s smile as well as his eyes with characteristic squinting even though he died yesterday. The day after tomorrow, somewhere in another world when Orson Welles rubs against his cat in “The Third Man,” his sardonic grin will be caught by light coming through a window. However what make “28 Up” amazing are not these same four individual’s being captured at four different times of their lives. We soon take it for granted.

The amazing thing is that we can see so clearly how the 7-year old became the adolescent, how the teenager became the young man or woman, how the adult still contains the seeds of the child.

Three upper-class boys from all right families and attending all right schools are what a part of this program follows. He was always snobbish and by twenty one he had become a reactionary prig. At age 28 we were not surprised when he refused to be interviewed; we saw it coming. However, at 35 he might have learned some humility, so it would be interesting to find out whether or not he has grown up after all.

Another small boy is a charming, unsociable individual at seven. He’s a daydreaming romantic at fourteen, defiant but dissatisfied at twenty-one, and a pariah on the move around Britain aged twentyeight years in the most unforgettable passage in the film. Sometimes he comes to live in a dilapidated house trailer for some time before moving on somewhere else, and he still can’t really believe that perhaps he has let something slip past him all his life.

There is another little boy who dreams of being big enough to be jockey one day; by age fourteen, he’s already a stable hand; by age fifteen he has become one even if for only short period in his life; nowadays he drives taxis and finds it just as liberating as when he thought jockeys were free to roam far and wide.

Many years afterwards there was a determined young Cockney living with his wife happily and working successfully as a builder in Australia. At 21 she had been an emotional wreck hazy, rebellious, spiteful and miserable. By the time she reaches 28 married with children, she is happy with herself: it’s almost too good to be true.

As I say earlier half of their lives are covered by this film our thoughts seem divided up here. We are absorbed by such things into which we get our eyes glued when we watch this kind of documentaries. Our minds tend to wander wherever mystery of human personality is involved. Did grown ups see what these children were going to be? Have you ever thought that your own destiny might have been so obvious? What do we have stored deep inside leading us through several next years? Is change possible? Or is this script already written?

My intention initially was that certain groups would find this movie quite interesting. Take teachers for instance; they could never watch “28 Up” without seeing their students from new perspectives soaked with intense curiosity. This film would also be a rich resource for poets and playwrights, and psychiatrists too. But then I realized that “28 Up” is not a movie made by experts or targeted at experts. Instead, it is an excellent piece of journalism that takes us through these people’s lives in such a way where we are forced to look inwardly at our own lives. It is as thought provoking as any documentary I have ever seen.

Now I cannot wait until the next part of this film when they are 35 years old. Some will make it while others may not. It’s almost like a horror movie to think how close this film has brought me to knowing what lies ahead for these people who were once total strangers to me. I can just see why some people decided to drop out of this experiment too.

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