Another Round

I recently wrote about the first installment of an ongoing documentary, The Up Series. If you missed that post, the short summary is this: it's a UK documentary series that explores the notion that a person's entire life (in terms of the opportunities available to him/her) can be determined by age seven, according to his/her current schooling, class, and social background. The first installment set up the premise by looking at a number of seven-year-old school children in the early 60s, and the series has been going back to "check in" every seven years since.

Which takes me to the second film, 7 Plus Seven. The children are age 14 at this point, just getting into the 1970s. The concept of the series remains fascinating to me. Unfortunately, like the first film, this specific installment of it did little to grab me.

First of all, like Seven Up, this is barely a film. The production values and tone have advanced beyond the "home-ec class film" level, but the series as a whole still doesn't seem to be aspiring to much. 7 Plus Seven is barely 50 minutes long, so you can work out just how much time that means is spent on each the 14 subjects. In fact, a fair portion of the 50 minutes is spent replaying clips from the first film (though helpfully, I admit), to remind us who everyone is and where they came from originally.

As for the new material? Well, as teenagers, the subjects themselves still feel... well, very much like "subjects," in that they aren't very active in this experiment. Teenagers certainly have strong personalities, then as now, but these films are looking at how an entire life will unfold. These adolescents haven't reached the point yet where that's really going to happen.

So, in the absence of meaningful interactions with the subjects, 7 Plus Seven simply tries to score points by showing areas where the original "guessed" correctly. The well-to-do children, at age 7, all had "career paths" for their schooling mapped out for them. They'd go on to this prep school, take these classes, and so forth. And the film happily points out to you that this all came true in every case for the upper crust.

Essentially, I saw 7 Plus Seven as another necessary component in getting to the real meat of this premise. On its own, it still wasn't worth much. And yet, I still haven't given up. I expect the next one or two movies to really begin to hit the mark. (And if they don't? Well, then maybe I need to reconsider the plan to watch all of them.)