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- VIEW POINTS, Page 56CINEMALives of Mannerly Desperation
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- "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.
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- By Richard Corliss.
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