35 Up

"Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man," quoth the narrator in all of the entires of Michael Apted's remarkable, "Up" series. We first saw them at seven, now they are thirty-five, and you have to ask yourself, how much different are they really? Many of them still have the same exuberance (in one form or another), many have the same ambitions (though some have achieved them and others have not). The life process is a profound thing, and it has never been captured better than in this documentary series. To the extent that it is proper to separate the parts of this whole, so far, this is one of my favorite entries into the series, and one that feels the most revealing. We come to discover that everyone really does ask the big questions of life, and they are often asked once we reach rock bottom. Life is beautiful and sad, and it is reflected in the lives of these individuals.