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- <text id=92TT0268>
- <title>
- Feb. 03, 1992: View Points:Cinema
- </title>
- <history>
- TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1992
- Feb. 03, 1992 The Fraying Of America
- </history>
- <article>
- <source>Time Magazine</source>
- <hdr>
- VIEW POINTS, Page 56
- CINEMA
- Lives of Mannerly Desperation
- </hdr><body>
- <p> "Give me a child when he is seven," Michael Apted might say,
- "and he's mine for life." In 1963 Apted, later a movie director
- (Gorillas in the Mist) but then a researcher for Granada TV,
- helped corral 10 British seven-year-olds and expose their elfin
- dreams and class prejudices in interviews for the documentary 7
- Up. Every seven years since, he has returned to see how his
- young charges are faring. This time, in 35 UP, they are mostly a
- dour lot, soldiering edgily on, recounting their promotions and
- sackings, their new children and divorces. The trio of public
- school twits, who in the first film sang Waltzing Matilda in
- Latin, have mellowed into responsible burghers. Poor Neil, the
- brilliant child and (last time) the homeless neurotic, has
- settled in Shetland, Scotland, frail but still alive. That is
- almost the best to be said for the entire group, and they seem
- to know it; they speak apologetically of the not very much they
- have achieved. The mannerly desperation that seeps through is
- heartbreaking.
- </p>
- <p>By Richard Corliss.
- </p>
-
- </body></article>
- </text>
-
-