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Neil, at 49, says he's 'absolutely sure' his faith has carried him

Jackie, Lynn and Sue maintain a friendship across the years, but one becomes increasingly antagonistic toward the project and the director himself as the years progress—this becomes a significant theme in subsequent episodes, as the project takes an increasing toll on certain participants who might not otherwise consider their lives quite so scrupulously, and certainly not so publicly. Socrates remarked that the unexamined life is not worth living: some of the film's subjects wonder aloud whether too much examination might also be a problem.

While the entire series of films is eminently worth watching—with all but the latest installment now available in a splendid boxed set—overall the sequels lack the punch of 28 Up. Perhaps that's purely a subjective response; 28 Up was my first exposure to the series. Or perhaps it has to do with the particular vividness and rapidity of change during our first three decades of life. Or perhaps it relates to a subtle shift in the lives of the participants, whose relative anonymity disappeared in the wake of that first big screen release (the previous docs were lower-profile television fare): the effect of a certain sort of celebrity becomes a theme, and while it's handled with intelligence, it doesn't resonate so deeply for me as the stuff of lives more ordinary.

There is one respect, though, in which 49 Up is utterly essential viewing, particularly for those of us scanning these crowds for some sign of God's face (to paraphrase Bruce Cockburn). The "Up" films rarely delve into matters that are specifically religious, yet they are suffused with something deeply spiritual. As questions about love, work, family and meaning reverberate through these lives, we are privy to the outworking or overcoming of destinies, the growth of souls. The "Up" documentary series provides us an almost miraculous, quintessentially cinematic opportunity, in the words of Dickens, to think of other people "as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys."

East End girls Jackie, Lynn & Sue reminisce about the changes
over the years

Yet in this most recent installment in the cycle, God's grace is all the more explicitly and abundantly evident in one particular life—and, remarkably, director Apted gives this divine "plot twist" pride of place in his documentary. (And here, it's interesting to note that Apted's next directorial release will be Amazing Grace, the story of hymn writer John Newton and the great Christian abolitionist William Wilberforce, coming in February 2006.) A rather reluctant participant suggests that the series has no more significance than a reality TV show, with the added appeal of watching participants "grow old, lose their hair, and get fat—fascinating, I'm sure, but does it have any value?" Then, without comment, Apted moves us into the final sequence of 49 Up, and God's amazing grace is revealed in the most broken, and heart-breaking, of the lives being lived out before us. It is in this most spiritually remarkable passage that the film recaptures the aesthetic richness and emotional power of 28 Up, juxtaposing a simple, evocative anecdote from the soft-spoken 49-year-old survivor with exultant footage of his optimistic 7-year-old self—a tacit, affirmative response to the skeptic's question, "Does it have any value?"

Apted's ongoing documentary project is one of the most singular and transcendent expressions to emerge during the first century of this newest art form, and it is our privilege to be able to watch it as it unfolds—every seven years, to be given so intimate and respectful a window on the journeys of these dozen souls. And to be led in turn, inevitably, to examine our own lives, and to look at the lives of those around us with a longer view, a perspective that's something close to Divine.

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