Movie Type: Interpersonal Relationships, Social Issues
Release Year: 1992
Country: US/UK
Run Time: 127 minutes
Plot
In 1963, director Michael Apted and then-partner Paul Almond chronicled the lives of 14 seven-year-olds for British television; they returned to the same group at intervals of seven years for updates, of which this is the fifth. It's possible to watch this film without having seen the other chapters (28 Up and 42 Up are the only other installments in circulation), because Apted offers thumbnail flashbacks with each interview. Several of the original subjects declined to be filmed for 35 Up (the film acknowledges them with reference to their most recent appearance in the series), and several others express ambivalence about participating. Two trios of friends from the original film -- John, Andrew, and Charles, and Jackie, Lynn, and Sue -- are interviewed collectively; the women seem to be still close, but it's not clear if the men are. Most of the subjects are married and raising children (and most have moved from London to the suburbs or the country); there are a few divorces, and one woman has chosen to be a single parent. The film saves its most fascinating figure, Neil, for last. In 28 Up, he was a university dropout, living a nomadic existence on the coast of Scotland. In the present film, he has moved to the Shetland Islands, where he's involved in local theater and taking medications for his psychological illness. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Review
Given the voyeuristic turn that television programming has taken in the last dozen or so years, with talk shows which told viewers much more than they wanted to know about total strangers, and then with so-called reality shows which set up ridiculous competitions as a means of bringing out the worst (and sometimes the best) in people, Michael Apted's TV series, which began with 7 Up, is beginning to look awfully quaint. And that may be its real virtue; Apted isn't interested in anything more than allowing individuals to record and reflect on the progress of their lives. He doesn't produce past lovers from behind a curtain or encourage his interviewees to gloat over the problems of others in the series. In their mid-'30s, these people inevitably bring up the subject of ambitions fulfilled and unfulfilled, and because most of the subjects' goals were modest to being with, their disappointments are also relatively small. Neil is the film's certifiably troubled person, but Apted is admirably discreet about his problems, allowing the young man to explain rather than justify or excuse himself. ~ Tom Wiener, All Movie Guide
Michael Apted - Director, Kim Horton - Editor, Claire Lewis - Editor, Nick Steer - Musical Direction/Supervision, George Jesse Turner - Cinematographer, Michael Apted - Producer, Claire Lewis - Producer, Michael Apted - Screenwriter
