Turning 21

Okay, now we're starting to get somewhere.

I made it to the third installment of The Up Series (if you're lost at this point, you really should follow that link). The year is 1977, and the subjects of the original film are all 21. Most are in college, still obtaining their education, so it's a bit premature in some cases to say just what direction their lives have taken.

But not for all of them.

And what's more, they're all adults now, and are now able to really participate in their own documentary.

In the two prior installments, the subjects were all answering the questions put to them quite off the cuff, and with very little (if any) introspection. But here, you can see the considerable thought that most of them are putting into their answers this time. For some, it's because they are now fully aware that lots of people are going to see this, and they really want to try to "control" the way they're perceived. In more fascinating cases, it's that the people are really taking a moment to reflect on things they themselves seem not to have considered, and they want to give honest and thorough answers.

Some of the people have even taken a dim view on the documentary itself, and its thesis statement. One of the subjects, one of the "upper class" boys that received a top education (and who is finishing up at Oxford during the making of this film), challenges the notion that everything was somehow just handed to him. He claims that the films thus far have stupidly portrayed the notion that just because his family was well off, he didn't actually have to do any work himself. He was supposed to go to Oxford all the way back at age seven, so of course he's "just going" to Oxford now.

He comes off like exactly the sort of snob the film quietly implied he always would be, but at the same time, he has a point. A point that the film actually makes for him at the same time. See, he was one of three boys all chosen from the same school at age seven, all of whom were supposed to go on to Oxford. Except that one of the three didn't make it. And at age 21, though this third young man still settled into a more-than-reputable school, he's looking like a bit of a long-haired rebel. What's the cause and effect here?

Unfortunately, there's a lack of diversity among the subjects that robs the project of better opportunities. Only four of the 14 children were girls, and one has clearly been affected by forces that have little to do with her education and class background. She was a wealthy boarding school child, but then her parents got divorced shortly after 7 Plus Seven. Now, she's a chain-smoking mess with little ambition and an extremely dim view on marriage.

Only one of the 14 was non-white, a boy of mixed race who never knew his father. He's one of several of the more "lower class" subjects that already seems on his way to a life of manual (or menial, or both) labor.

Even at just 21 years of age, one of the subjects has already had his dream crushed. At the age of 7, one of the young boys dreamed of being a jockey, and at age 14 when the second film checked in on him, he was working in a stable and in training for the job. By the time of this third film, he'd raced only three times, finished poorly in all of them, and given it up. He's placing bets for people at race tracks as he studies the London street system to become a cab driver.

One of the more interesting cases is of a young farmboy who first learned in a one-room school. He wanted to be a physicist. On the one hand, the films would seem to imply that boy's station would ensure he'd never achieve that dream, and yet this third film finds him in college studying for exactly that. On the other hand, the films would perhaps more fundamentally suggest that "whoever you are at seven years old, that's who you will be all your life." Even at seven, this boy knew he wanted to be a physicist. So perhaps the film is actually validated in this example, not disproved, as he's grown into exactly the young man he said he'd be.

Even if you come down on the latter side of that discussion, another example is quite contrary. One of the boys in the study was, at age seven, the happiest, funniest, most hopeful of the entire lot. Now at age 21, he's squatting in an apartment, he dropped out of university after a semester, and is getting what little work he can find on occasional construction jobs. He talks of having contemplated suicide, and is clearly not well in the interviews for this film.

In short, this is where The Up Series really starts to kick into gear. Of course, 14 kids is not a viable scientific sample size, if into you are trying to read any scientific credibility into the documentaries. And the films' premise is now apparently being be proven wrong in places just as conspicuously as it's being proven right. But regardless, the people the films follow are taking on lives of their own (well... literally!), and their stories are becoming compelling regardless of the filmmakers' intentions or message.