49 Up

This film vaulted into my top ten today. It is one of those rare movies that is so good, it makes me not want to make movies. It makes me think I should become a garbage man or a retail clerk. At my very best, in my highest estimation of my future self, I do not think I could make a film this humanistic, emotional, or true. It is part of the series 7 Up, 14 Up, 21 Up, 28 Up, 35 Up, 42 Up, and so forth, in which British filmmaker Michael Apted takes 12 or so British children and interviews and films them every seven years to see how they've changed and stayed the same. The movie started out with dual premises, the Jesuit idea that a personality is formed by age 7 and that in Britain, the class you are born into determines your future prospects.

But what Apted discovers is so much more interesting. People change, they stay the same, dreams are abandoned and discovered, people have families, they grow old, they find joy and they find sorrow. It is so simple, yet infinitely complex. It is one of the great humanist projects of this century. Everyone should watch it. I look forward to going back and watching the other episodes.

Politics, race, class, gender recede into tiny little meaningless dots in the story of 12 different lives. Just incredible. Roger Ebert called it noble.