28 Up

This weekend I watched the documentary 28 Up. I heard about this series years ago and was always intrigued by it. Every seven years, the director Michael Apted follows up with a group of people he first interviewed at age 7. It's meant to be an observation of class in British society. The director deliberately chose a group that included children from upper-, middle-, and lower-class backgrounds. Admittedly, a lot of the commentary on classism is lost on me since I'm not from the U.K., but still, it's pretty clear what different worlds these groups of people live in. At 28, most of the upper-class subjects are in professional careers (lawyer, filmmaker, etc.), while many of the lower-class subjects are still working the same low-wage jobs they had at 21 (sausage factory worker, brick layer, etc.). Obviously, privilege, or lack of it, has played a huge part in determining the paths of their of lives.

Apart from the class issues, the documentary is pretty affecting as an observation of the life cycle. These are all average, ordinary people for the most part. None of them is now a celebrity or a CEO or a political revolutionary. None of them has even departed radically from the path they were on seven years ago. But it's still interesting to see the changes that happen in seven years, from the uncertain 21-year-olds in budding careers or at the end of their education, only a few married, to the more-settled 28-year-olds, most of whom are now married and settled into careers. The conversations are more philosophical and reflective; questions turn to marriage and children. It's fascinating to hear people reflect on their lives, on things they said when they were age 21 or 14 or even 7, and to discuss the reverberations of events that happened in the past that still affect them many years later.

To me, the most poignant interview is with Neil, who is homeless. This man obviously has some form of mental illness, yet you can tell he's very intelligent. He was homeless at 21 and is still homeless at 28. He travels around living off social security, staying at any place he can afford. They're interviewing him by a lakeside in Scotland where he's temporarily living in a trailer. At one point he comments on the mindlessness of modern life, he says something like, well, suburban life only buys you the privilege of riding a commuter train 5-10 times a week and staggering home, coming home on weekends to watch TV, only to do it all again on Monday, and that it's all a form of brainwashing. But then the interviewer says, well, do you think the people who live that suburban life would prefer a life like yours? Then he says something like, at least I have the kind of life I like, if I had to live the suburban life I'd end up trying to kill myself.

And you think to yourself, this guy is nuts, but in a way, don't we all at some level recoil at how desperately boring and unfulfilling modern life can be? Is it really anyone's dream to work that 8-to-5 just to pay the bills then come home exhausted, too busy and tired to contemplate anything? And yet all the other subjects of the documentary seem to live a version of it (some of the women are homemakers, so there's sort of an exception, but I would argue that it's still your conventional life). You finish the documentary thinking that it's disappointing that most of us can expect our lives to be so predictable. But what else is there, really, besides your family and/or your career? Yourself and your experiences, I suppose, but that gets old. That tendency to settle down is always there, like the laws of gravity. The moral of the story is that most people do end up settling down into predictable lives, mainly determined by what circumstances they were born into. Most people just accept their fate in life, whatever it is, and make peace with it. And I don't really know if that's good or bad. Shouldn't we all be a little more outraged at this? But we're not, most of us just float through life unaware of how different it could be, eking out whatever happiness we can get.

I would definitely recommend this documentary series, especially to someone in their 20s. This is the kind of film that makes you think about your own life and how your family background has affected where you are today. Warning, it is very British, I definitely wish there were an American version, but you will still get a lot out of watching it. And there are two later installments I'm looking forward to seeing, 35 Up and 42 Up.