Review of the documentary "Seven Years of Life"

a selection of reflections on Seven Years of Life 1

In the past week, until the evening of February 22nd, my father and I watched the documentary "Seven Years of Life UP SERIES" intermittently.

The original intention of watching this documentary is to educate children. The child was not interested, but we watched it happily.

This documentary is filmed every seven years since 14 children were 7 years old. So far, they have been photographed in 212, that is, 56 years old. The time span is long and the life track is clear. The original intention of the director was to understand the influence of family background and social class on a person. However, watching this film, we see a different life: life is created by multiple factors, family background, social class, personality, pursuit, goal setting, self-adjustment and change, marriage and other factors are all important components of a social person, and their happiness and satisfaction, their confusion and struggle are all unconsciously caused.

Let me talk about my feelings:

1. Social stratum is not completely insurmountable, but it is impossible to have a big span: the lower class can reach the middle class, but it is difficult to reach the upper class; The middle class can go to the upper level, or it may fall to the lower level for some reason; But the upper level is still the upper level.

Nick became a professor in an American university from the farmer's son through his own efforts. SUE of the lower class wanted to change from an early age and become a middle class through hard work; NEIL, a middle-class man, has been living in a poor life because of an immature choice, and so on.

people in the upper class are ambitious and knowledgeable. They have been exposed to different education since childhood, so the phoenix is a phoenix after all. Of course, unless they don't work hard, they may fall into the middle class. However, generally speaking, the more upper-class people are, the stricter they control their children, and the children study harder and harder. They think that they shoulder the responsibility of changing society, so they are more serious and persistent. Now it seems that we should pay more attention to the lives of these people, and their way of educating their children may be more meaningful to us.

2. People may never imagine the lifelong influence of parents and family on a child.

In the film, we can see the different eyes of all kinds of children at different times: some children are put in a boarding school with charity nature because their parents are separated, and they have been helpless all their lives, which has always affected them; Some children are sent abroad because their parents are separated. No matter how favorable the conditions are, she feels abandoned and unhappy. Some children are relatively unfamiliar with that relationship because they didn't have much communication with their parents when they were young.

Comparatively speaking, children who grow up in a harmonious family environment get more company from their parents and are more calm and confident in life.

It can be seen how important it is for parents to accompany their children and communicate with them, which affect their character and their future life.

3. The sooner or later they get married, the more they decide whether their life is successful or not, and also their quality of life.

this is particularly obvious in the film. Three girls from the lower classes, two of them got married at the age of 19, and their later life was to give birth to children, run a family, divorce, remarry, and have physical illness earlier. The other one, because she wanted to fight for her ideal first, then consider emotional things, her life was much better. Although she also experienced divorce and remarriage later, everything was relatively perfect, and she got what she wanted. Because she is more aware that getting involved in marriage prematurely may bring her fetters, she made a choice different from her peers.

4. You must be cautious about important decisions in your life.

NEIL was such a confident and lovely child since he was a child, but when he failed to get into the ideal university, he decided to drop out and take the exam again, which may be the most failed decision in his life. He didn't pass the exam later, and his parents didn't understand his decision. He has been wandering outside for many years. Although many years later, he became a volunteer member of parliament, his life's poverty and poverty were all related to that careless decision. Imagine that if he finished that ordinary university, his life would be different: although it may be ordinary, at least he is peaceful, with a family, children and a stable income. Unfortunately, he was displaced and spent many days in darkness.

5. Family stability is an important guarantee for people's success.

Most people in the film, especially the middle class and the upper class, seem to have more stable and happy families, relatively few divorces, and their career development is relatively smooth. I don't know why, maybe their marriage was carried out when they were older, so they were relatively rational and more stable. They are more harmonious with their partners and have more successful careers.

6. In the film, I saw the development of Britain.

The life of their underclass may be the life of many middle-class people in our country; Their middle class is our upper class. Material abundance, beautiful environment and people's quality of life are beyond the reach of many people in our country. I remember that every time I go back to China, on the first day of my arrival, you will feel gray everywhere. The residential building feels like a slum, and of course you can adapt to it in a day or two. Sometimes, my friends' satisfaction with life makes me feel like a frog in a well. To be honest, people's society is still too developed. How many years will it take us to catch up?

7. The film showed us a vivid life growth track, and I saw my own shadow. I am suddenly afraid of the aging and death of life.

Because the film is continuous, you can suddenly see a person from youth to middle age, who is similar in spirit, but not in shape. You think, everyone will get old, including the upper, middle and lower classes. Life is so short, you have to face the departure of your loved ones, you have to face the slow aging of your body, the change of your body shape, the great change of your appearance, the endurance of life, and so on. At this moment, we will truly feel that human aging is just around the corner, and there is death. A feeling of fear, a feeling of sadness.

if possible, I'm going to watch this documentary again, from beginning to end. Selected Comments on Seven Years of Life 2

I didn't mean to be sensational. There are enough absurd events in this era to deserve a more sensational title. It's just that I never thought that if a guy with a camera comes into my life every seven years from the age of seven, let me sit there and describe my ideals, my life and my love in these seven years, break my poor disguise with almost sharp questions, and use my words seven years ago or even seven years earlier as footnotes. I can't refuse him, just as I can't resist the passage of life. This guy called himself Michael Apted, and after that, he made totally irrelevant commercial blockbusters such as The Legend of Narnia 3: Treading on the Waves at Dawn, The Dark Day Crisis of 7, Rome, etc. However, he started to work at the age of 23 in 1963, and he has persisted in the only work so far? "Seven Years" is indisputably selected as one of the 5 greatest documentaries in the world.

When he first entered the directorship in 1963, he had a whim to aim at a group of seven-year-old children from different family backgrounds in London. Some of them attended private aristocratic primary schools, some were in public schools and some were from boarding schools. One day in the winter of 1963, the twelve children were gathered by him, visited the zoo and watched the polar bears, played together, and then divided things. He recorded every child's children's talk about the future truthfully and edited it into a documentary of "7 UP". At first, his original intention was just to see how many British politicians and trade union representatives will be born from these children in 2, so as to observe the possibility of British social class in shaping people from different backgrounds. Therefore, he found these twelve children every seven years and recorded 14 UP, 21 UP, 28UP, 35 UP, 42 UP and 49 UP, until the latest 56 UP was released on schedule in May 212. There is a great translation, 49 Unknown Destiny. Destiny is unknown because there are really many unexpected adventures in one's life, regardless of age. As an audience, the most wonderful feeling is not that you sit in front of the computer in an afternoon, watching the children in the documentary in black and white, grow into young hippies, then start to get fat and bald, face the pressure of life in middle age, and then enter the old age with their own problems.

the most wonderful feeling is that you feel that everyone has a similar track under different tracks. The unscrupulous children's words in childhood will come true one day in the future. At the age of 14, I grew up in adolescence, shy and unnatural in the face of the camera, and my expectations for the future were no longer as confident as childhood. At the age of 21, he rebelled, maybe smoked and drank too much, dressed as a hippie, and despised the camera. After that, this boring adult kept asking questions, and at the same time, love woke up, and their young partner appeared in the film. At the age of 28, most people entered the family and began to enjoy the joy of being a father and a mother for the first time. At the age of 21, rebellion has been softened by love. At the age of 35, everyone entered a watershed in their career, and their achievements were high or low. At the age of 42, everyone admitted that it was not easy to maintain a marriage. Some people had cracks, some divorced, and their new partners and new children appeared in the documentary. At the age of 49, most of their relatives passed away, and they were either promoted to grandparents or broke their hearts about their children's future. At the age of 56, I haven't seen it yet. The feeling of being touched by the helplessness of life can no longer support me to look at the real life of real people so cruelly in an afternoon. Selected thoughts on "Seven Years of Life" 3

Perhaps it is true that people are forced to sort out their lives every seven years. Not all people have the courage, so some people turned down Michael Apted's request for filming after the age of 21. Fortunately, most people accepted such cruel documentary photography despite their pain. The original intention of Michael Apted was to experiment with the shaping of children from different backgrounds by British social class. As a result, I saw that three children from private aristocratic primary schools claimed to only read the Financial Times when they were young, and the children who wanted to study law at Trinity College of Cambridge University were admitted to Cambridge and became lawyers as they wished after entering the society. He has his own house in London and the suburbs and is a partner in a law firm. There is a child who has a distinguished ancestor, from elementary school piano, and later married the daughter of the former British ambassador to Bulgaria and became a royal legal adviser. Children from elite families, after receiving a series of elite education, finally become a new elite, with a stable marriage and a comfortable life. Six children from public schools, some from middle-class families, a little girl said to the camera at the age of seven, my ideal is to have two children. She has been influenced by ballet dance since she was a child and has a superior childhood environment. At the age of 21, he suddenly rebelled from a good girl to a smoking rock youth, and said angrily to the camera that getting married was a stupid thing. As a result, at the age of 28, he changed his wife and mother, lived a good life and raised two children. He shyly explained the change because of him. In this way, she and her husband grew old in documentaries between the ages of 28 and 49, including the fact that their children had grown from babies to young people.

Most children from boarding schools can't get the care of their parents because of family breakdown and other reasons. At the age of seven, their eyes were generally confused. Some children dropped out of school at the age of 14 to become riding school children, and then drove a taxi to make a living. Some children did not continue their studies after graduating from high school, worked as workers in construction companies and changed jobs. At the age of 49, they still had to continue to work hard to earn money to support their families. A child was successfully admitted to the Mathematics Department of Oxford University. After graduation, he worked as a middle school teacher. At the age of 35, he worked as an international teacher in Bangladesh. After 42, he returned to England to get married and have children, and he jumped to the middle class. But there is a farmer child from a Scottish farm who passed the entrance examination to Cambridge University to do physics research, and at the age of 28, he was a visiting scholar in the United States. At the age of 35, he still insisted on research. At the age of 42, he had to face the cruel reality of fruitless research and become an undergraduate education professor. He was the only child who successfully attacked the elite. When he was 42 years old, he was interviewed and talked about the situation. He said with tears in his eyes that a person has to bear many difficulties in growing up alone, which his family in a rural farm in Scotland can't help. At the age of 49, Michael Apted specially took him back to the farm in rural Scotland. At the age of seven, he took a picture of him jumping in front of the mountain. Now it is still the mountain, and he has white hair and passed with emotion.

One of the most embarrassing children in this group comes from a middle-class family. After graduating from high school, he failed to enter the Cambridge University and went to another university. After graduation, he left his parents' blessing, and at the age of 21, he worked as a worker on a construction site alone and lived in a small apartment that occupied others. Facing the camera, he has optimistic expectations for the future and wants to make a difference. At the age of 29, when Michael found him, he became a homeless wanderer, wandering aimlessly in the countryside with two boxes, skinny and not knowing where the future was. At the age of 35, Michael found him again in a government low-rent house in the northernmost part of Britain. In the lens, in the cold winter, he went out shopping for daily necessities in thin clothes, walking in the cold and humid wilderness, holding a paper bag and trotting all the way, lifting his fat pants with his hand from time to time. He lives on meager government social assistance. For his own life, although he failed, he had philosophical thinking and felt the traces of a good education from his words, but he could not adapt to this society. At the age of 49, he moved to the middle of England and became a member of the community. He could get the salary of living expenses, and at the same time, unemployment assistance also gave him some preferential treatment in housing. ? I don't want to get married? He has been saying this sentence from the age of 7 to 49.

Although everyone's situation is different, although the social class in Britain is still running at a fixed level, I can feel that they can all live in that land with dignity. It is unthinkable in China to become a community councillor from a homeless tramp. Many people thank the college entrance examination, which has impacted the hidden social hierarchy in this country to a certain extent, but more and more social problems are far beyond my thinking. I can only think, but if I realize that life actually has similar tracks, will there be other perspectives for many puzzles and troubles in the next seven years? Thanks to this world's greatest documentary.