Movie review: ‘56Up’

Fans of the BBC’s “7Up” documentary project — which has followed a group of Englishmen and women since 1964, when they were 7 — can be excused for approaching each entry with hesitation. What’s occurred that warrants a new visit?

The answer, always, is plenty, and how this extraordinary series chronicles, every seven years, the living of ordinary lives is mesmerizing. “56Up,” its eighth edition (edited, as earlier films were, from a week of British TV programs), sees its subjects’ touchingly human experiences tinged with a bittersweet feeling as they arrive at the half-century mark.

Yet viewers have the pleasure of being reintroduced to them, seeing how they’ve changed — or stayed the same. We meet their spouses, kids and grandchildren, see them work and play. Some, like Paul, Bruce and Andrew, are content in middle-class or well-off domesticity. John is a barrister, while Sue shares her financial hardship. Once-feisty Peter, who opted out after “28 Up,” is back as a mellow musician.

Nick and Suzy wryly mull the “Truman Show”-like aspect of being on a show that’s made them stars just for being themselves.

Then there’s Neil, the Liverpudlian lost soul who’s been the series’ haunted conscience since even before this thoughtful, nervous man, who once dreamed of Oxford, was seen enduring tough times in “28Up” and “35Up.”

“I wanted to be a person of importance,” Neil states. At 56, he’s a local politician in his small Northern England community, yet still tortured by his connection to a show that’s documented his often painful life. He confronts the series longtime director, Michael Apted — unseen but heard often — and chafes at what the show has and hasn’t wrought. Then his need for connection emerges, and it’s moving.

In contrast to Neil are: Symon, raised in a children’s home in the late 1950s; Lynn, who loses her longtime job as a librarian with grace; and Tony, a rough-hewn East End cabbie. They are people whose journeys to middle age have also brought heartbreak, but whose tiny achievements are quietly epic.

The same is true of “56Up,” as it shows that life is what happens when you’re busy making other plans. And how, in case we forget, every age can predict the next.