WORKS IN PROGRESS
By Andrew Malekoff©2007
In 1964 movie producer Michael Apted conducted and filmed interviews with fourteen seven-year-old children from diverse backgrounds living all across the United Kingdom. Seven Up is the first in a series of films that have been produced in seven year intervals over the past four decades. I recently watched the latest installment - 49 Up.
Imagine having your life portrayed on film for public consumption at regular intervals for as long as you live; facing questions about your work and family, your successes and failures, your joys and disappointments. Imagine having to dig deep to consider and then share with the world whether or not your hopes and dreams have been fulfilled.
In the beginning of the early episodes the film presents viewers with a maxim attributed to Jesuit missionary Saint Francis Xavier, “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man.” In an interview Apted says that he believes that there is a core personality at seven years old that doesn't dissapear. Some of the children he interviewed were raised in privileged surroundings and boarding schools and others in poverty and group care. Yet their early socioeconomic status did not necessarily predict stability or happiness in later life.
Following Seven Up, each successive film includes interspersed clips from previous ones, enabling viewers to see the individuals mature from childhood to adolescence to young adulthood and beyond. Many, but not all, get married and become parents. Some separate, some divorce and some remarry. Many speak to the challenges of marriage. Their physical maturation is presented before our eyes in a sort of time-lapse photography style, accompanied by the music of childhood dreams, adolescent angst and adult realities. Older age awaits them (and us) and is only a few multiples of seven ahead. Having lost contemporaries of my own by their age, I found it remarkable that this random sample of fourteen people were all still living at 49, although we are just now beginning to see signs and symptoms of ailing health among the group.
I was also surprised to learn that only one person dropped out (after 21 Up) and especially after hearing several reflect on how painful it is to be a part of the series. They talked about the difficulty of having their lives (and families) intruded upon, being placed under a public microscope and, to add insult to injury, being subjected to random (mis)interpretations and judgments by strangers based on edited celluloid snippets of their lives.
Some of them recognize the contribution and importance of their ongoing participation in the project. I think that their sacrifice is a gift to the rest of us. Their lives portrayed at seven year intervals over forty-two years and counting, offer us a message of hope. By laying their lives on the line they demonstrate, in graphic terms, just how resilient human beings are and how powerful family life is.
What about Saint Francis Xavier? Is his contention correct? : “Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man [or woman].” At first glance, when I look back at myself at seven, I find little to predict what has become of me today. I cannot quite remember myself at seven. There is no filmed documentary available of anyone asking me questions about my life and my future in 1958. The best I could do was to dig up old report cards. In one of them my first grade teacher Mrs. Finkel wrote, “Andrew tends to go to extremes lately. He is either the best boy in the class, or he creates mischief by loud laughter.” In her next report she upgraded me and wrote, “Splendid worker.”
If I look closely at myself at seven and fourteen and twenty-one I can find some clues that lead me to where I am today. But the clues don’t appear to me in a straight line. The path is a crooked one with many twists and turns and detours. When I look at my own sons, now 18 and 22, it is good for me to remember this, to remember that like me and the Seven Up kids they are and will continue to be forever works in progress.
This article was originally published in the Anton Community Newspapers, Long Island, NY.
