“This has been a glimpse of Britain’s future.”
Each installment of director Michael Apted’s documentary series ends with those words, spoken over footage of 14 boys and girls, all aged 7, romping and playing. At the time that statement was recorded—in 1964, for a one-off episode of Granada TV’s World In Action—it felt appropriate.
But since Apted has turned that one episode into a sequence of films (broadcast on TV in the UK and served up in theaters here) that check in on those same 14 Britons every seven years, that closing proclamation feels progressively less and less fitting. And not only because the subjects of this film are now in their 60s, and all staring down old age in a post-Brexit England.
As heartening as it is to peer, with the latest installment 63 Up now in theaters, into the lives of these men and women and see how much their personalities and prospects have changed or remained the same over the course of five decades, they haven’t been truly reflective of Britain for some time.
Apart from gentle Symon, who is mixed-race, the rest of the subjects of the original documentary are white. And as they’ve gotten older, they’ve all revealed themselves as straight and cisgendered. They’re hardly a representative slice of England’s population any longer, but they are the sample Apted was given and that he’s stuck with for 55 years. What sense you get of their home country’s diversity only appears in shots of the various subjects at work: Bruce teaching math in the East End of London or Lynn working with kids in a school library.
With 63 Up, Apted continues to bring the documentary back to issues of class in England, something that was only alluded to in the original TV program. As he’s followed his subjects through this series, we’ve been able to see their quality of life rise and fall, often due to the opportunities afforded by their financial station. Andrew and John, who grew up in a wealthy area of London, both became lawyers and live comfortable lives. Jackie and Neil, both from more middle class upbringings, have struggled.
The subject of class has an extra rawness for many of the 63 Up subjects. Austerity measures in England for the past seven years left Jackie trying to scrape by on £40 a week and Neil, living in Cumbria, getting by on a meager salary he earns as part of the local government. Andrew, by contrast, is happily gardening at his lush country home and John is still a successful litigator and chairman of a charity that works in Bulgaria. The disparity, and their discussion of it, is glaring.
The main issue hovering over the film is life’s finiteness. Just as many of the participants glow with pride about their many grandchildren, they also break into tears when talking about their parents dying. Nick, the former nuclear physicist from a tiny village in Yorkshire, reveals that he has been going through treatment for a cancerous growth in his throat.
But it’s Lynn who leaves the most lingering mark on 63 Up due to her absence from it. She passed away in 2013, the first of the original 14 to die. Though she still plays a part in the film through archival footage woven into the series via the work of brilliant editor Kim Horton, Lynn’s death is deeply felt by her husband and two daughters, who were interviewed in her place, and also surely by anyone who has followed these films.
It’s only with Lynn’s passing and the ensuing considerations of mortality that the show’s closing statement, intoned with era-appropriate ’60s TV narrator authority, rings true. No matter how rich or poor you are or what color your skin is, you’re going to die. And this series of films will one day end. That remains a glimpse of Britain’s future and our own.
63 Up opens today at Cinema 21