Give me the child

21 Up

(1977)

The third in director Michael Apted's series (but the first of feature length, following the half-hour television documentary Seven Up and the hourlong 7 Plus Seven) following a group of English children into adolescence and now young adulthood and then beyond. The series this year reached age 56, and 56 Up is said to be on its way to a theater near me, so I'm making haste to catch up aging with people who are, after all, just about my own age.

The declared motive motto for the series is the ominous Jesuit boast "Give me the child for his first seven years, and I'll give you the man," but even as early as 21, some of the fifteen or so subjects have begun to put the lie to that maxim, or at least are showing that it's true, but . . .

To be sure, poor little rich girl Suzy, thoroughly unpleasant at 7 and 14, remains thoroughly unpleasant at 21 (to be fair, you have to imagine that her parents are even worse), and her closest male equivalent, John, remains morally convinced of the rightness of the existing distribution of class privilege (but key word there is morally: John at least thinks about these issues, whereas Suzy's head seems never to have had a thought trespass on it). And East End tough Tony, though his dream of being a jockey ended in his teens, remains the same boy who declared at 7 the importance of knowing how to use one's fists.

But John's fellow proto-toff Charles, already wearing jeans and talking guardedly about hippies at 14, has by 21 come to examine the class system critically, perhaps his only point of agreement with John being that those of their privilege background are obliged to stay in England and bring their abilities to bear for the island's benefit. Nick, the only farmboy of the group, has succeeded at Oxford, while the middle-class Neil, perhaps the most exuberant 7-year-old in the bunch, has failed in his Oxbridge ambition, washed out of Aberdeen University in a year, and at 21 seems directionless and depressed to the verge of suicide.

I could yammer on and old (I haven't even mentioned the two boys from the orphanage, or the trio of girls from the East End, or Bruce, who began wanting to be a missionary and now chafes to admit his charitable tendencies), but hey, why don't you just start watching these yourself. The Jesuits may not have it quite right, but what is certain is that any life is the most compelling narrative there is.