One of the sublime pleasures of the UP documentaries is getting to know a dozen people who were willing to be reflective in an unstudied way we likely won’t see again, given the ubiquity of confessional television and our online age, where many of us live and speak in a studied, performative way that comes from lots of watching and being watched. Of all the films in the ongoing series, 35 UP may be the best. Director Michael Apted’s subjects, now midway through their thirties, are old enough to have married and divorced, to have had children and to have buried their own parents. The proclamations and predictions they made in the four preceding films are retrieved and proven to have been true or false. By thirty-five, the rich kids have started to have put some socioeconomic distance between themselves and the poor kids, which Apted’s film, arranged as it is, tends to underscore both to them and to us. “I can’t change what I was born into,” says Suzy, a bit embarrassed by her privileged upbringing, and she’s right, but the real resonance of that observation comes when we see a few of her cohorts fighting tooth and nail to change what they were born into. — Russell Lucas
- Directed by: Michael Apted
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- Release Date: 1991
- Running Time: 123
- Language: English
Arts & Faith Lists:
2019 Top 25 Films on Growing Older — #10