R.I.P. Michael Apted
He directed some widely viewed but not terribly distinguished features, among which I’ve seen: Amazing Grace, Blink, Gorky Park, Nell, and Thunderheart (I haven’t seen Coal Miner’s Daughter or Gorillas in the Mist). I don’t think I ever sought out a movie just because it was his. His magnum opus was the Up documentary series, which, every seven years, examined the lives of the same dozen or so Britons.
This series – at least, episodes 4–9, considered collectively – might be the greatest work I’ve viewed on TV or at the movies. Ever. Only Hoop Dreams gives as rich a picture of human life, but it spans less than a decade. The Up series goes on longer than half a century.
Some say that it’s great despite its auteur (see this review). I disagree. Yes, there are problems with the initial conception; yes, when Apted conducts his interviews, he is often narrow-minded. These flaws might have been fatal had the series been shorter. But they become fascinating once Apted in effect turns into one of the subjects (albeit one who stays behind the camera). His own attitudes, like those of his interviewees, are laid out to be scrutinized, and they change gradually but significantly.
It is claimed, in the review that I linked to, that the series is plagued by the “Woody Allen” difficulty: can we call a movie great if it was directed by a horrible person?
This is a smear. Apted is not perceptibly worse than most of us. As the reviewer concedes, other researchers who’ve done longitudinal studies have exhibited Apted’s same prejudices. (And isn’t it arguably more narrow-minded – especially for an historian, which is what the aforementioned reviewer is – to so forcefully condemn a single person for attitudes that he shared with so, so many of his contemporaries?)
There is one crucial artistic choice that Apted gets right. Every episode depicts the present, juxtaposing it with what has happened before in the interviewees’ lives; but because all but the first few episodes are of roughly equal length, Apted must decide what old footage each episode will rebroadcast and what it will leave out. On the whole, he includes the old material that best resonates with the interviewees’ present concerns. The result is that some themes (images, plot points, feelings) which once were prominent are dropped from the series.
And this makes the Up documentaries uniquely lifelike. It’s unusual for a movie, or even a TV series, to begin with one theme only to drop it later (unless it’s trying to perform some sort of postmodernist trick). But this sort of fading out is precisely what happens in real life. Things come and go. True narrative is not all unified.
For all the retrospective musing, each Up movie is remarkably present-focused. Thus, Apted begins the sixth episode (42 Up) with scenes of a middle-aged person’s wedding – that is, with a kind of rebirth – and he concludes the eighth episode (56 Up) by celebrating a grand new building in an ailing London neighborhood.
The series’s motto, taken from the Jesuits, is “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.” Yes; but our pasts are not always the point. Like other things, our histories rise and fall in importance for us – as does our present.
This series – at least, episodes 4–9, considered collectively – might be the greatest work I’ve viewed on TV or at the movies. Ever. Only Hoop Dreams gives as rich a picture of human life, but it spans less than a decade. The Up series goes on longer than half a century.
Some say that it’s great despite its auteur (see this review). I disagree. Yes, there are problems with the initial conception; yes, when Apted conducts his interviews, he is often narrow-minded. These flaws might have been fatal had the series been shorter. But they become fascinating once Apted in effect turns into one of the subjects (albeit one who stays behind the camera). His own attitudes, like those of his interviewees, are laid out to be scrutinized, and they change gradually but significantly.
It is claimed, in the review that I linked to, that the series is plagued by the “Woody Allen” difficulty: can we call a movie great if it was directed by a horrible person?
This is a smear. Apted is not perceptibly worse than most of us. As the reviewer concedes, other researchers who’ve done longitudinal studies have exhibited Apted’s same prejudices. (And isn’t it arguably more narrow-minded – especially for an historian, which is what the aforementioned reviewer is – to so forcefully condemn a single person for attitudes that he shared with so, so many of his contemporaries?)
There is one crucial artistic choice that Apted gets right. Every episode depicts the present, juxtaposing it with what has happened before in the interviewees’ lives; but because all but the first few episodes are of roughly equal length, Apted must decide what old footage each episode will rebroadcast and what it will leave out. On the whole, he includes the old material that best resonates with the interviewees’ present concerns. The result is that some themes (images, plot points, feelings) which once were prominent are dropped from the series.
And this makes the Up documentaries uniquely lifelike. It’s unusual for a movie, or even a TV series, to begin with one theme only to drop it later (unless it’s trying to perform some sort of postmodernist trick). But this sort of fading out is precisely what happens in real life. Things come and go. True narrative is not all unified.
For all the retrospective musing, each Up movie is remarkably present-focused. Thus, Apted begins the sixth episode (42 Up) with scenes of a middle-aged person’s wedding – that is, with a kind of rebirth – and he concludes the eighth episode (56 Up) by celebrating a grand new building in an ailing London neighborhood.
The series’s motto, taken from the Jesuits, is “Give me a child until he is seven, and I will give you the man.” Yes; but our pasts are not always the point. Like other things, our histories rise and fall in importance for us – as does our present.