35 Up

I'm still working my way through the Up Series, and have made it to 35 Up, the installment filmed in 1991. This didn't occur to me until after I'd watched the movie, but I'm about to turn 35 myself in less than a week here. Thinking about the movie after the fact, and about what I was going to write here, made me reflect on my own life a little bit. What if I were in an experiment like this, and some documentary crew were about to check in on me after four prior installments? I'll be honest... making no judgments about any successes or failures in my own life, it certainly seems like something extremely personal that I'm glad not to be sharing for all the world to see!

Overall, I was perhaps a little bit disappointed in this film compared to the previous age 28 installment. I had mentioned last time a curiosity about the new generation now being born to these original subjects. By and large, these new children were still under age 10 at the time of this installment, and didn't receive all that much screen time. In short, it's too early to tell much there.

I'm not sure these films really have much more to offer in support of the original mission statement, that a child of seven will display every thing of him-/herself that will be present in the adult. But the documentaries have morphed into something else. Put simply, the audience cares about most of them simply as people now, not as test subjects. I'm now watching these movies out of pure interest to see how their lives have changed, independent of the "message."

To that end, it's been a rough seven years for most of them. See, I had had births on my mind during the last installment, an interest in seeing how their children would develop. What I really hadn't considered much were deaths. By the time of this fifth film in the series, a startling number of the subjects had lost one or both parents. The losses weighed on the people in a variety of ways, and provided a sad theme of sorts to this installment.

35 Up starts with Tony, the would-be jockey turned cab driver. His wife is now a cab driver too, and the two seem happy with their three children. Still, they seem a little too ready with comments such as "you never know, we could be broken up 10 years from now," and both acknowledge that he does nothing around the house. There seems to be a little stress there.

Both his parents have died, and he still seems especially raw about the loss of his mother. Even Tony's wife says she was more a friend than a mother-in-law, and it's clear from the way he acts with his own children that he wants a friendship with his kids as much as (or more than) he wants to be an authority figure.

He's given two more of his dreams (mentioned in a previous film) a shot. First is to be the owner of a pub. He had a very short run of that before parting ways with his co-owner over some kind of conflict. The second is to be an actor. He's worked occasionally as an extra in TV and films, but has never had a significant part. He claims rather proudly that he's tried everything he ever wanted to do. But the interviewer hits him hard with an alternative interpretation: that he's a failure at everything he ever wanted to do. "Better to be a has-been than a never-was," Tony says in closing.

Suzy is still happily married, and also has three kids. The oldest is off to prep school, and the middle is "volatile" in her words, suffering from learning disabilities and maybe dyslexia. She says she doesn't relate to him as well as she would hope. There are many juxtaposed clips of past interviews, contrasted with her current state. For example, she has moved with her family to the country, although a clip from a previous film shows her saying she could never imagine living in the country.

She too has lost her father, and her mother is in the hospital undergoing treatment for an aggressive cancer. She's also wistful about her involvement in these films. She gets recognized a fair bit in life, and says that while most are nice about it, a few are quite rude. "They're lucky they didn't have to have it done to them." As I noted earlier, I have to agree.

Bruce is still a teacher, and remains concerned with poverty and racism. Taking a term away from his normal school, he is currently teaching in Bangladesh. He is unmarried, which he chalks up to his being a bit "shy and awkward." He too has lost his father, though he says they'd drifted apart long before that. "I'd like to have been able to miss him," he says.

Then there are the three women who have always been dealt with as a group, Jackie, Lynn, and Sue.

Sue is now divorced and raising two kids as a single parent. In her words, the divorce "was probably easier to do than it should have been." Oddly, she acknowledges having the second child even after suspecting her marriage would end. She was an only child herself, and always jealous of people with brothers and sisters. Furthermore, she feels that it's important for brothers and sisters to share both parents and not simply be half-siblings. Thus, she had her second child even while beginning to contemplate divorce.

Me, I give the crook-eye to this notion -- it all seems more self-serving that serving the interest of a child. Mind you, I'm not a "stay in a bad marriage for the sake of children" type (as I don't think that's helping the children). I just don't see the logic of having another child in a marriage on the rocks.

Lynn is still married and has two daughters, but seems strangely more bitter in this installment, making negative remarks about the government of the past decade, and of the inability of "the system" to provide for children. The reasons for her darker world view are perhaps revealed in a one-two punch toward the end of her segment. First, we learn she has lost her mother -- her parents being a specific "stability" in her life that she considered an "advantage" over some of the other people in the documentary. Secondly, she had been experiencing blackouts, and ultimately learned she had inoperable tumors in her brain.

Jackie, who seemed on the tail end of her marriage in the previous film, is indeed divorced now. But she had also indicated in the previous film that she'd likely never have children, and is now raising a young boy as a single parent. ("I never would have believed I would have enjoyed it as much as I do.") She mentions one of the other women in the documentaries, Suzy, saying she wishes she could give her son as much in life, but still thinks she's doing alright.

On to Nick, the farmboy-turned-physicist. He's now an associate professor at the U.S. university where he was doing research in the previous film. Most of his time is spent talking about the sort of fallout from the previous film, in which his wife came off perhaps a bit cold. Apparently, most of the people to see the film thought so too, even writing them about it, and remarking that the marriage seemed doomed to failure. Yikes. More reason to be glad it's not your life on film!

Understandably then, she has declined to appear in this new film. And the two together have decided not to allow their one-year-old son to appear in the movie either. "The sins of the father shouldn't be visited on the son," says Nick. But for whatever damage the films may have done, Nick still finds truth in them. He thinks there's a great deal of truth in the "look at a child of seven" concept.

Next are John, Andrew, and Charles, two of whom opted out of 28 Up. Charles has again declined to participate, though we're told he still works at the BBS, is now a producer, and recently married.

However John, the young man who challenged the documentaries as dismissive of his hard work in school, has decided to return for this film. But he has an ulterior motive. He's become a barrister, but his real passion is for the country of Bulgaria. His mother was from there, and he has married the daughter of a former ambassador to that country. He's especially concerned with improving health care there, and says point blank that his appearance in 35 Up is only in the hopes of bringing more attention to the conditions there.

Of the films themselves, his opinion hasn't changed. He says he "bitterly regrets" the day his headmaster pushed him forward at the age of seven, and says that every seven years that comes around, these films are a little "pill of poison" he has to swallow. I think it's more evidence in support of the unintended thesis of this particular installment in the series -- that it sucks to be a subject in this series. (Even if your life has by most objective standards "gone well.")

His old schoolmate Andrew has no such complaints. He doesn't think the films have affected him at all, though he does try not to talk of them. He's become a partner at the same law firm where he was at 28. He has married and has two children. Continuing the trend of the subjects speaking more of their political inclinations, he talks of taxes, saying they should be higher to put more money into fostering society and academics.

Paul is the subject I've probably spoken of the least in my past Up reviews. He moved to Australia while still young, and became a bricklayer there. As of 28, he'd been trying to become an independent contractor and own his own company, but now by 35, that has failed and he's back to working for others. Still, he seems happy enough with his wife and two kids. He's taking the family on a trip to England at the time of the films, to show them where he's from. His daughter is doing fine, but he says he fears a bit for his son, who isn't doing so well in school.

Then there's Neil, who had been homeless at both 21 and 28. He's finally stabilized a bit and settled in the Shetland Islands. But he lives in a trailer, still struggles for money, and gets by on Social Security. His face is scarred visibly from his hard life. He does a little community theater (after having confessed to an interest in theater at 28), and is trying both to publish a play and organize a professional touring theater company. Neither endeavor has been fruitful as of yet.

The oddest thing about his interview comes when they discuss public reaction from the previous films. Lots of people wrote of him as somehow being a success story, that he was free to be completely himself, unburdened by anyone else's expectations. Personally, I don't see that at all, though whether it's me or other people, judging the man favorably or unfavorable, the point is that once again, people are judging him because of his appearance in these films. It's John's "pill of poison."

Neil is unmarried, and when the interviewer asks if he's given up on that, he says "all but." He has sought no treatment for his mental instability, though when asked if he thinks he's going mad, he answers "I don't think it, I know it. But I think it's a mad world." He thinks it's still possible that by the time of the next film, he'll be wandering around homeless in London. I, for one, hope he's wrong.

Two interview subjects have gone MIA in 35 Up, without even any mention being made that they were ever part of the program. My curiosity high, I had to do a little research on the internet to find out what happened. Symon, the one racial minority in the project, apparently returns in subsequent films, so I'll not spoil what I learned about him.

But Peter is out of the series for good, apparently as fallout from what happened in 28 Up. In his interview there, he spoke very critically of the government, alluding in particular to his disagreement with the policies of Margaret Thatcher. Apparently, this coupled with his job as a school teacher was reason enough for a tabloid press campaign against him. He lost his job as a result, and then declined any further involvement in the films. So here it is again: parents, if someone asks to put your seven-year-old child into a lifelong documentary film series, say no.

And yet, I can't look away. And I expect to be watching 42 Up in the near future.