Director Michael Apted on 63 Up

Eagle-eyed viewers of last week’s U.K. general election might have spotted a strangely familiar face. For 56 years, the Lib Dem candidate for Workington, Neil Hughes, has been talking to filmmaker Michael Apted about his mental-health issues. First seen as perhaps the brightest of the 14 kids captured in 1964’s Seven Up!, Hughes was homeless and wandering Britain’s north by the time 28 Up came around in 1984. Subsequent installments of the epic documentary series­—which revisits the class-diverse group every seven years­—leave the impression of a deeply principled man dedicated to public service. He lost his most recent race, but Hughes’s candour suggests a model of unique position for any politician.

That unpredictable life path will yield yet more surprises when 63 Up opens in Vancouver on Friday (December 20). True to form, and without revealing too much, Hughes is where you’d least expect to find him. There has also been illness and one death among the series participants since Apted last checked in, along with the more mundane triumphs and travails. The Georgia Straight is only half-joking when we suggest to the filmmaker, reached in Los Angeles a week before the election, that the saddest decline belongs to the country itself.

“Because of Brexit, we were very late finishing the film,” he says, with exasperation. “I was holding my breath that something would happen which would give us a nice political end, as it were.” Time ran out, and what remains, Apted predicts, “is going to be catastrophic. I can’t see any other way. It’s going to split the country in half.”

Britain’s woes return 63 Up to the more sociopolitical tenor of earlier episodes, although a warmth prevails in the end. He’s still a disembodied voice interrogating his subjects, but Apted agrees that he’s looser and more familiar this time around. There’s a sense in 63 Up of the shared experience, maybe even a whiff of relief.

“Yeah, I think this one was not necessarily the easiest one,” he says. “But there was a good spirit. We all made it out to our 60s—and our 70s—and we’re still alive and well. I think there was that confidence about it.” Over the years, Apted has endured chastisement from council-estate-bred Jackie for the project’s inherent sexism, skepticism about the veracity of the documentary form itself from physicist Nick, and grief from almost everyone about the intrusion into their lives. The mood of 63 Up is one of acceptance.

“The longer it goes on, and the more famous they become, and also the more countries it gets showed in—it makes them feel good about it,” Apted says. “A lot of what’s in the film can be embarrassing to them, but I think they understand that everybody’s life has its ups and downs. As long as it feels authentic, I think we’re all right.”

He adds that everyone is permitted their say in the final cut. “I didn’t want to lose people because of my own kind of infidelity,” he says, although 63 Up is missing one of its most intriguing personalities. At 21, upper-crust Suzy blazed with contempt for Apted’s project. Later years found her more contented, but still critical. At 56 she said she’d hang in despite hating it. At 63, she’s gone.

“She’s screwed me every single time,” Apted proclaims. “There have been times when I’ve had a crew on the road going down to where she lives and she’s said, ‘I’m not gonna do it.’ And then she does do it, and she’s completely neurotic about it.” Laughing quietly, he explains that he’d “been bullying her for about eight months” when schedules went sideways and Suzy missed her slot. “If we continue, and enough of us are alive, I’m sure she would come back.”

Those words, of course, are not said lightly. At 78, Apted is surely aware that he might not be up for another Up. (He even muses that Charles Furneaux, absent since 1977’s 21 Up and now a documentary producer, might be the guy to take it over.) He’s clearly affectionate when he says of Oxford-educated QC John: “People think he’s a bit of a twat, and yet he’s probably the most interesting and generous of all of them.” This is how family speaks of one another. The film’s tender ambiance is an acknowledgement, perhaps, of the one adopted relative who never goes before the camera.

Published December, 2019