The Up Series (1964-present)

My marital property and I watched together two installments of this documentary series (21 Up and 28 Up). She had already watched Seven Up and 14 Up without me, continuing a long pattern of not-waiting to watch items of at least nominally mutual interest. To testify on my behalf I call Zodiac, Casino Royale, There Will Be Blood.

The Up Series follows the lives of fourteen British children since 1964, when they were seven years old. The British are obsessed with class, and so representative children were chosen so that the filmmakers could 'discover' that social class predetermines the future. Every seven years the director ropes as many of the participants into filming new material.

I did not expect the mildly to moderately negative reaction I had from watching. Watching 21-year-olds grow into 28-year-olds is per se interesting, insofar as this is a process I am currently engaged in. Most of the participants seem legitimately likeable, or at the very least interesting, res ipsa loquitur. Many of them even had reasonably interesting things to say about the British education system, class, and life in general. Nemo dat quod non habet.

However, I cannot say the same for the narrator/filmmaker, consensus facit legem. He seems only to have produced an interesting film by accident, quo warranto, to the extent that he facilitated the participants' presentations of their own perspective. This extent, to me, does not seem great. His questions were uninspired when they weren't facile or ham-handed. Volenti non fit injuria.

But what do I know? A lot of other people seem to really enjoy this kind of stuff. Hic Haroldus rex interfectus est