56 UP
Credit to the makers that this fascinating experiment spanning 49 years has not thus far been abandoned.
What a privilege to be allowed to follow these ordinary individuals for a sustained period of history….our acquaintance with these children from adolescence and young adulthood through to middle age frequently outlasting
other relationships…. (who the hell keeps in touch for 50 years or more in these transitory days of instant gratification?...Not me that’s for sure..when anybody gets on my nerves that’s it!! they are immediately exorcised from my diary….)
This fascinating documentary is a poignant and niggling reminder of
what we don’t want to refer to and what we deliberately spend our lives avoiding, what we wilfully ignore with all our resistance…the reality of our mortality…
Less profoundly it appears this peek into the existence of people we will never meet satisfies an innate need to nose into the lives of others…guilt free…without the stigma of being caught gossiping…. and without the need to invite some of the more complex characters home for tea (Neil might not be much fun in between edited highlights…and how would you get rid of them and pretend to care simultaneously?...start yawning furiously while fetching their hat and coat ?)
These priceless films depict the happiest of the subjects as loved and cherished…it does seem sadly and inevitably that the unloved are the melancholy among us (No mum or dad or sibling or mate to speak up for Neil…to register that he is esteemed in any way)…perhaps we should take more care to remember that a child needs to be filled with much love and effort for that child to in turn give love and effort back to society.
It’s a shocker that this beautiful entertainment continues…I wouldn’t have bothered to express even mild surprise if the insipidness of X-Factor and all the other dross had strangled this lonely gem…but it endures…a miracle in these days of vacuous rubbish blaring out ubiquitously from most screens and loudspeakers.
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