No other film I have ever seen does a better job of illustrating the mysterious and haunting way in which the cinema bridges time. The movies themselves play with time, condensing days or years into minutes or hours. Then going to old movies defies time, because we see and hear people who are now dead, sounding and looking exactly the same. Then the movies toy with our personal time, when we revisit them, by recreating for us precisely the same experience we had before. Then look what Michael Apted does with time in this documentary, which he began more than 30 years ago. He made a movie called 7-Up for British television. It was about a group of British 7-year-olds, their dreams, fears, ambitions, families, prospects. Fair enough. Then, seven years later, he made 14 Up, revisiting them. Then came 21 Up and, in 1985. 28 Up, and next year, just in time for the Sight & Sound list, will come 35 Up. And so the film will continue to grow... 42... 49... 56... 63... until Apted or his subjects are dead. The miracle of the film is that it shows us that the seeds of the man are indeed in the child. In a sense, the destinies of all of these people can be guessed in their eyes, the first time we see them. Some do better than we expect, some worse, one seems completely bewildered. But the secret and mystery of human personality is there from the first. This ongoing film is an experiment unlike anything else in film history.Roger Ebert. . https://youtube/watch?v=7LZ5X-XoJ1Q
Posted on: Sat, 13 Dec 2014 15:46:01 +0000