Family

35 Up

(1991)

If the dominant demographic theme of 28 Up was wedding bells, here we hear the knell of loss: parents lost, husbands shed. But in fact, as far as we know (without explanation, neither Paul's orphanage mate Symon nor Neal's fellow Liverpudlian Peter appears in this installment except in archival footage), the divorce rate among this cohort remains remarkably low, and the two divorces--forJackie and Sue, two of the three East End girls--have been balanced by marriages by the two upper-crusters who declined to appear in 28, John and Charles.

Charles again opted out, but while adding a wife he has moved up to producer at the BBC. John, on the other hand, has an intriguing reason for coming back in front of the camera. Still a successful barrister, he has married the daughter of a former ambassador to Bulgaria, which turns out to have been his mother's ancestry, and while he remains steadfastly Tory, he has become committed to the welfare of that country, and he hopes that his appearance on the program will raise consciousness for that cause.

Cracks have appeared in Suzy's marriage, and she has become increasingly complex and appealing. But the cracks we (clearly, I was not the only one to notice) perceived in the marriage of nuclear physicist Nick and the equally ambitious Jackie were apparently illusory--or at least that's what Nick (now an associate professor; I expect him to be full at 42) says; Jackie has opted out of the series, along with 1-year-old Adam.

Toff Andrew has moved into corporate law and become a partner; East Ender Tony still drives his own cab, now on shifts with his wife, and his childhood ambition to be a jockey now manifests in the ponies he keeps for the 4 children.

The only never-marrieds are Neal and Bruce. Neal, one of the most exuberant of the 7-year-olds, has made some progress battling his demons. He's still on the dole, but he's settled in a council flat in the Shetland Islands, where he acts in the village pantomime (Beauty and the Beast this year; last year he directed the show, but because of his insistence on his own dramatic vision, he was not invited back to that role this year), writes plays, and is trying to organize a professional touring company for the islands. It would not be a surprise if he has become successful on his own terms by 42, but neither would it be a surprise if he doesn't reach that age.

Bruce certainly is a career success on his own terms: still teaching math, he is spending a year in Bangladesh, and though he brushes off the suggestion, it's hard not to see the 7-year-old who hoped to be a missionary and help Third World people "be, more or less, good." But I still see a tragedy in Bruce's personal life: he admits to "teenage-like crushes on people," but he remains careful not to specify a gender, an evasion that I suspect reveals far more than it conceals. Yes, yes, I know: he's not really our friend, he just plays one in the movies, and he doesn't owe us full disclosure, but his closetedness seems too profound to exist only when the camera is running. I'm hoping that at 42 he'll be in love and settled, but I'm not optimistic.

42 Up

(1998)

For the first time director Michael Apted asks participants the Heisenbergian meta-question of what the series has meant to them. Working-class Jackie says it had made the 14 of them family; upper-class Andrew says he'd never let his own son participate in such a program; his boarding school chum John says (or, rather, said without being asked in 35; for the second time in three installments, he has opted out) that the exercise is torturous; and Suzy (whose evolution has been among the most rewarding) says the same. But Aussie Paul acknowledges that it's a kick in the positive sense as much as in the negative; University of Wisconsin nuclear physicist Nick jokes that his ambition is to become as famous for a scientific discovery as he is for the series, "But that's never going to happen, Michael"; and Tony, who has moved from the East End to a house in Woodforde, Essex, but still shares shifts in his cab with his wife, contrasts the usual cabbie's bonus of finding a Paul Gascoine in his hack with his own experience of having fares regularly recognize him as a celebrity.

Notable developments in the lives of the two biggest puzzles: Neal, back in London, has been elected and reelected as a Liberal Democrat member of the Hackney Borough Council. He has received a B.A. in open university to teach English as a second language. That said, he remains unemployed and on the dole, but when Apted asks, "What's the most enjoyable thing in life for you right now?" he replies, stunningly, "I think it's looking to the future." Oh, and also, he read a prayer at . . .

Bruce's wedding! To Penny, a colleague at the East End Catholic girls' school to which he moved on his return from Bangladesh. "He's not the kind of man you'd ever have any doubts about," she says. Hmmm.

Back on the active roster is Symon, Paul's orphanage mate, and the only person of color in the 14. He was, by 35, divorced from Yvonne, the mother of his 5 children, and now he's married to Vionetta, with whom he has a 4-year-old son, Daniel (named for his never-present father; his anger over the abandonment has, he says, finally turned into boredom), as well as a stepdaughter she brought to the marriage.

Nick's marriage still seems solid--Jackie, burned by her portrayal in 28 (which to me seemed simply the portrayal of a woman who wasn't going to settle for being a helpmeet), still refuses to participate, but we learn that she too is a professor (of journalism) at UW, where, yes, Nick is now a full professor. The farm is getting away from the family--it's too much for his aged father, and neither brother is interested--and we return with him for a nostalgic trip to the Yorkshire Dales, a place whose beauty he proclaims "magnificent but rather grim."

Also solid, after 23 years, is the marriage of Lynn, who was initially the least prepossessing of the trio of East End girls, the one whose ambition at 7 was to work at Woolworth's. Budget cuts have ended her long tenure in a mobile library, but she now is a librarian who oversees class visits and has various administrative responsibilities. Her husband, Russ, cooks dinner during the week, and Lynn takes over on the weekend. She has quietly become the pleasant surprise of the series.

Her childhood pal Jackie, who before 35 had divorced the husband she had wed at 19, then quickly borne a son from a "brief but sweet" relationship, now has 2 more boys and has moved to her partner's native Scotland--except that Ian quickly becomes her ex-partner, and she's on her own with 3 children and rheumatoid arthritis, surviving with help from the state and a mother-in-law.

Tony has improved his family's lifestyle a bit beyond his earning power, and has also risked his marriage more than once via infidelity; a big change in the next 7 years would not be a big surprise.

And then Suzy, whose domestic contentment seemed in jeopardy at 35, continues to stretch: faced with the prospect of an empty nest and the consequences of her decision to be a stay-at-home mother rather than pursue a career, she is now training to be a bereavement counselor, for which she is uniquely suited, since she still grieves not only for her parents but for their marriage, which ended when she was 14, leaving her in a deep emotional hole from which she has heroically emerged.

49 Up

(2005)

Perhaps I've been wrong about Bruce, who now has 2 sons and finds himself "contented and reasonably happy." In any case, I love these people, but I've really had enough of them for a while. OK, I'll mention that Paul has had psychiatric treatment for his low self-esteem, that his daughter became the first in either family to attend university, studying archaeology, and that he has begun to run marathons. And I can't fail to mention that Nick has hit a hardware snag in his research, about the same time that his marriage to Jackie ended, but that he has found love again with Chris, an education professor at the University of Minnesota, about whom he says, without a great deal of exaggeration, "I don't want to be superficial, but she's the most beautiful woman I've ever seen." Or that Symon and Vionetta have become foster parents, that Tony remains married and financially overextended, having built a vacation home in Spain, and that John has returned to the series and continues to work for humanitarian aid to Bulgaria.

Lynn, asked my Apted whether, after 30 years of marriage, she's in love, tears up and answers, "Very, very much." But budget cuts further threaten her work as a children's librarian, doing some of her most rewarding work with handicapped children. Her childhood friend Jackie has a burst of anger at Apted, accusing him of underrating her throughout the series, but if he and we underrated anyone early on, it was this heroic East Ender.

And Neal's painstaking rebound has continued--we even seen him driving a car, which surprises him as much as us. He has left London and is on the Cumbria County Council, in the extreme northwest. He has some part-time earnings and an increased participation in the church, but he remains the only one of the 14 not to have walked down the aisle.

And finally, Suzy, so unpleasant at 7, at 14, and at 21, saying that for the first time she feels "happy in my own skin," but that after seven films, she is bowing out. I just checked the 56 Up website, and indeed, it looks as if I'll get to find out whether she stuck to that resolution on 1 March, when it's scheduled to open downtown.