We happened to watch the movies Sherman's March by Ross McElwee (1986) and 49 Up by Michael Apted (2005 - at the Dobie right now for you Austin-types) this weekend. If you watch either one of these films, they will probably make you like people a little bit better. If you watch both of them in the same weekend, it will leave you with a residual fascination with humanity that may never wear off...
Sherman's March begins with the idea that the filmmaker is going to retrace Sherman's route of destruction through the south and document its legacy. Instead he gets distracted by a recent breakup with his girlfriend and ends up documenting his journey through the south as various family members and friends try to set him up with "nice southern girls" and as he locates some southern girls of his own. McElwee's film is more of a personal narrative than a documentary, and it is hard to imagine that people in our current time of reality TV and constant disclosure would be as interesting, open, and unconsciously revealing as the people in this film. Go rent this right now. It is long, but I swear you will love it.
49 Up is the next is a series of documentaries made for British TV that explore the lives of a group of British people every seven years since the age of seven. This is the seventh of these films, and mixes footage from the previous editions with new interviews to update us on the lives of the participants. I think this edition is unique in the series as the subjects tell us more blatantly how this series has affected their lives. None of them was able to make the decision to do it or not when they were seven, and now their entire life is opened up every seven years and shown to an international audience. But, all except one are still participating. And I hope they continue to do so, just to see such an unusual document of humanity through to the end.So: if I see you in the next week or so, I'll probably think you are very very interesting. At least until the afterglow of well-done documentary wears off.
2 comments:
Dear Spacebeer,
Okay, so thus far I have only watched 7 Up and 7 Plus 7. I accidently put the next ones out of order on my Netflix queue, so I have 28 Up sitting here at home while I wait for 21 Up to arrive.
Here's my question: should I go ahead and see 49 Up even though I still have to catch up on a lot of years in between? Or should I wait until it's available on DVD? What would Spacebeer do?
Signed,
Two Down (Five to Go)
I don't think you would lose anything by watching 49 Up in the theater -- they go back and show you clips from the intervening years, so you get caught up on what happened. And then when you watch the other ones at home, you will get more footage that didn't make it into this one, and the ability to see into the subjects' 49 year old future...
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