Quartile rating: 7.5/10 · 1 rating
49 Up is the seventh film in a series of landmark documentaries that began 42 years ago when UK-based Granada's World in Action team, inspired by the Jesuit maxim "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man," interviewed a diverse group of seven-year-old children from all over England, asking them about their lives and their dreams for the future. Michael Apted, a researcher for the original film, has returned to interview the "children" every seven years since, at ages 14, 21, 28, 35, 42 and now again at age 49.In this latest chapter, more life-changing decisions are revealed, more shocking announcements made and more of the original group take part than ever before, speaking out on a variety of subjects including love, marriage, career, class and prejudice.
49 Up is one of cinema's most extraordinary ongoing social experiments — a genuinely unparalleled longitudinal portrait of human lives across class lines over four decades. The 'plot,' shaped entirely by real lives unfolding in real time, is deeply compelling and increasingly poignant at the 49-year mark. The subjects speak naturally rather than perform, so 'acting' is modest but honest. Cinematography is functional TV-documentary style with no particular visual ambition. Novelty is exceptional — no other documentary series has sustained this kind of generational intimacy and sociological scope, making it nearly sui generis. The ending, while not dramatically constructed, carries the natural weight of lives still in progress — satisfying but open-ended by design.