To me, this movie is perfection.

the audience applauded

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Yes, he did it again! One of the great filmic projects of the 20th Century, Michael Apted's The Up Series, makes its entrée into the new millennium with the seventh bravura installment of its documentary format. Although shown on British television over the last four decades, viewers in other parts of the world have usually had to see it on the big screen, in local arts and independent theaters. Late this year, the DVD of the 49 Up was released in America, just a few weeks after its theatrical release, and it's a worthwhile successor to earlier films. While the series' participants wax bitterly, on occasions, many wax philosophically, displaying one of the series' greatest virtues- showing that the average person is not necessarily as doltish as modern reality television would lead you to believe. Given an opportunity to reflect, average folks can stumble upon real wisdom, rather than the Lowest Common Denominator stupidity that American 'reality' shows like Survivor or Fear Factor highlight. Of course, neither of those shows is reality- they are merely staged gimmick shows. The Up Series is 'real reality,' and no, there won't be a new episode in a week's time to appease the speed addicted MTV mindset. It'll take seven long years before the next entry pulls into port.The series began as the brainchild of the Left Wing ITV television show World In Action, made by Granada Television, which in 1964 sought out typical school children from the lower and upper classes of English life. Back then, the class system in Merry Olde England was noteworthy, as the voice-over intoned, 'The executive and the shop steward of the year 2000 are seven years old,' but by the third installment, 21 Up- in 1978, the lives of these ordinary people took precedence over political posturing, and the series was firmly in control of co-producer Apted- director of The World Is Not Enough, Coal Miner's Daughter, and Gorillas In The Mist, who was merely an assistant on the original Seven Up. The motto of the series has always been the notion espoused by a Jesuit proverb: 'Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.' That seems to have proved a durable- if not infallible, wisdom….Some viewers and critics feel that this should be the last episode. I disagree, for people like that are injecting a 'purpose' into the films, rather than extracting one out of them. This is often a problem with news coverage in any field. Centuries and eons from now, this series will be a Rosetta Stone- despite the immense tracking of our culture via printed media, films, radio, television, and the Internet, for it was the first one to focus on average people, whatever their backgrounds. These participants will become icons who are studied and debated long after most of their peers are dust; a fact which may explain their reluctance to appear in it, but not excuse it, for the nobler option is almost always to serve the betterment of all. Is a few minutes on screen glimpse into real reality that much of a loathsome burden?By 56 Up, it would not shock me if the first death occurs within the fourteen- I just get a sense of it- perhaps Lynn or Jackie, or perhaps some tragedy, so that sense makes each episode with all of them all the more meaningful. The series, as a whole, and this installment, shows that there is a great nobility in utility, which is best summed up by wisdom that Bruce imparts: 'When dreams go and the day to day living of ordinary life and family life takes over, I think we just sort of live without our dreams.' In what other medium does the offhanded poesy that too much fictive art misses come so vividly to life? Where else do people show off the best in themselves- an ability to cogitate, reason, empathize, and reflect, rather than the worst- their own petty envies and lusts?….The reason why the series touches so many others is precisely because they lack such things as artistic talent or a platform to be seen. If I can be so moved, merely by the memory of watching the earlier installments of this film, I have to believe that most of the participants- whom we all know and refer to by their first names, as they age and wise up a bit more, will see that they, too, have been touched by something greater than anything their lives, alone can signify. And the fact that their touching will last long beyond flesh on flesh is something anyone reading this review, now or in the far future, can be thankful for.

It seems to me that director Apted's brilliant 'Up' film series appeals deeply because they're the first in-depth film biographies of ordinary people. After all, each of us has seen innumerable film biographies of the rich, the famous, and the notorious (as well, in recent years, we've seen phony "reality" programs about supposedly "ordinary" people posed into artificial situations). It's purely fascinating to see, to follow every seven years, your contemporaries, to feel a curious kinship with some and a distance from others of them, and to compare your own life's fortunes and the choices you've made in it with theirs.It's not difficult to appreciate the resentment or dissatisfaction of some of the 'Up' series' participants with their having been chosen in the first place, and with being asked to participate serially every seven years, in the films. Yet I suggest that the participants might ponder this: before the advent of film, especially of home video, diary-keeping was widespread - especially among the educated and upper classes, and diary-keeping demands a lot more daily thought and toil from a diarist than being filmed every seven years requires from the 'Up' series' participants. The only advantage that viewers of the 'Up' series have over reading the journals of deceased diarists is in the immediacy, unique to motion pictures, of the Up films: these are, in their cinematic way, quite like diaries only more timely than diaries in that the 'Up' series' participants are living contemporaneously with the sharing of their motion picture diary with a vast public. It's doubtful that today's busy individuals would take the time to daily compose diary entries, and so in the 'Up' series the film medium enters, it substitutes for and improves in some ways upon, the ancient art of diary-keeping. Granted that diarists carefully chose - edited on the fly, if you will - the words of their writings, but so too have the 'Up' series' participants always had a measure of editorial control over what director Apted will or will not include in each of the series' installments.Have any of the participants grasped that all of them will be watched, studied, analyzed, enjoyed, and vicariously bonded with by viewers for decades, centuries, and perhaps even for millennia? - that they're the first ordinary people to have the significant events and their own experience of their lives recorded for posterity? This series, whether Apted or its participants, and whether we viewers or film critics have yet grasped this fact, is not yet the anthropological gold mine it will in the near and distant future surely become: in viewing these films we're not archaeologists looking for clues to be construed - or misconstrued! - from cave paintings, potsherds, art works, and common artifacts, we're seeing actual ordinary people of our time speaking and acting (i.e., behaving) in their actual lives. Do any of the participants perhaps find it a bit eerie to know in advance that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of years on utter strangers (as well as their own ever-reproducing descendents) will be viewing, hearing, studying their twentieth to twenty-first century lives?All that said, the 'Up' films, as they've evolved to be to date, spur me to moot the notion, based on the knowledge that 'Up' series' participants' relatives and co-workers, friends and acquaintances, children and grandchildren have all been affected by the films, that a much larger film series of monumental proportions - gaining in size and scope as the original participants' children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren reproduce - could, theoretically, be produced and filmed. Such would be a vast opus, requiring increasingly many more film crews, interviewers to film ever-burgeoning numbers of participants. It could spawn among viewers factions of fans who might like and support one branch of the growing families and dislike and detract its other branches, and thus perhaps teach us much about the whole of the human condition - about the development among disparate groups of respect, disrespect, suspicion, envy, competition, enmity, etc. Such a vast series would amount to the Story Of Our Species, begun albeit, much later than the latter-in-our-species-evolution debut of motion picture technology allowed for having begun the series with Adam and Eve. No, it was impracticable then - with Adam and Eve - as it is now...but then as camcorders and webcams have only just come on the scene, there will one day exist gazillions of miles - or digits! - of footage of the lives of ordinary people: and who would ever, say, even ten years from now, endeavor to try to sort through all of these film records to try to discern, let alone to try to tell, the story of our species members?! - especially since camcorders have inspired legions of amateur filmmakers who are already producing gazillions of miles and digits of amateur motion picture fiction. (One can get really carried away with imagining endless extrapolation from the 'Up' series, can't one? I just did!)It can only be dimly anticipated how future viewers of the 'Up' series - viewers who will see it long after Apted, the series' participants, and its contemporary viewers will have long been dead - will relate to the 'Up' films, and especially how they will relate, or not, to their participants (no doubt it will be easier, because of the immediacy of motion pictures, for future viewers to relate to the 'Up' participants than it is for us early third millennium people to relate to, say, pre-Norman Conquest Britons, or to the people who constructed Stonehenge). But it would be lovely to know how those future viewers will feel about the 'Up' films - perhaps lovelier than it would be for me to know how I'll feel about it if I should live long enough to enjoy '56-Up'!

Everyone in the world should have the treasured opportunity to watch these brave souls grow up before our eyes. I recommend all the films beginning in 1963. Certainly the class system is exposed as the monster it is, but I do find increased options for the children of the "less born to privilege", 49 year old subjects.I love the reticence and modesty of the subjects in this film. They seem to grasp the massive cultural contribution they are making but prefer not to think about it. I applaud the subjects for saying that they want to drop out but I do hope they ultimately don't. In this day of fake reality TV, it is wondrous to see the power of the Real McCoy of documentary film/TV. I am close enough in age to the 49 ups. Through them I have a brilliant record of the world I grew up in and that of my English family. Bravo for an historic act of courage and generosity by all concerned.

I have recently watched all of the Up series, finishing with 49 Up this evening. While I have enjoyed the series and been fascinated by the people involved, I did agree with John somewhat that it's a bit like Big Brother or some other reality series. Upon talking it over with my husband, however, I find that I have misjudged it. The series does have a lasting value that is not present in entertainment based reality TV shows. What does the series teach us? Tolerance and acceptance of our own fallible judgments. We see these people at 7 and we decide what they will be doing at 21 or 35. Inevitably we're wrong on some important level. What this shows us is that we can never truly know someone, especially someone we don't have an intimate family relationship with, because we never get more than a glimpse into their inner life. At 7 I didn't like Tony. At 21 I didn't like Suzie. The only person I have admired from the beginning is Bruce. Now, at 49, I find them all interesting, individual people and I have a great deal of respect for each of them. They have made their lives something to be proud of. They bring value into the lives of their families and communities, but also to those of us who only see a tiny portion of their lives every 7 years. This isn't reality TV. This is reality- this is life being lived by real people. I hope they will continue to do the program, despite the intrusion. I hope they will understand that they do bring something more into our lives than a couple hours entertainment.