Probably not the best way to start an in memoriam piece, but you're reading these words so I guess it means I didn't change it.
But there's another, more serious meaning intended by calling Apted, who died Thursday at age 79, an "apt pupil."
Michael Apted did not launch the Up series, which started with the film Seven Up! and continued onward until 63 Up, the last film released in Apted's lifetime, in 2019. Whether any more will be released may be a matter of whether Apted had his own person serving the role of apt pupil that he once served.
If you need a little more explanation of what I'm talking about -- though I hope you don't -- the documentary film series started out as a television series in 1964, as the initial installment aired on British television and was only 40 minutes long. It took a look at a cross-section of British seven-year-old children, intending to follow their progress every seven years throughout their lives, to see how factors like social class and intelligence affected their lives and the choices they made. Who knows if creator Paul Almond had any idea what this would become, but in 1964 his driving inspiration was the quote "Give me the child until he is seven and I will give you the man."
There were girls involved as well of course, and the reason we saw them become women, as well as their male counterparts fulfill their part of the deal, was not Paul Almond, but Michael Apted. Almond was not even around for the second movie, Seven Plus Seven in 1971, which at 53 minutes gradually started approaching the feature length that would characterize all subsequent entries, with all films from 28 Up onward exceeding two hours. Almond went on to pursue narrative feature filmmaking, while his researcher, Apted -- his pupil, if you will -- carried the torch for the series and made it his life's most recognizable accomplishment.
My wife and I watched the Up series in 2011. Maybe our interest was boosted by the fact that we had our own newborn who was in his first year of life, or maybe we just thought it was time to tackle this landmark achievement. The series had gotten as far as 49 Up by that point, and I'm sorry to say that we have never resumed to watch the two subsequently released entries.
But I've always had a special fondness for this series, getting to know its characters and their tendencies, and the profound sociological experiment that has grown out of what they signed up for -- what their parents signed up for, actually -- before any of them had any idea how it might affect their lives.
Which means I've always had a fondness for Apted as well. He also had a busy career directing narrative features, including one of the worst James Bond movies (The World Is Not Enough) and a couple acclaimed film I still haven't seen (Gorillas in the Mist and The Coal Miner's Daughter). His other credits include Nell, which I liked, and bizarrely, the third movie in the Chronicles of Narnia series, which I also have not seen.
But for me, Apted's narrative features always felt like outliers from the project that defined his career, and seems like what he was put on this earth to do. I didn't have any sense of him personally, but for the way he deftly steered that series -- not always without controversy -- he earns my eternal kudos.
We didn't follow him from age seven, but Michael Apted did "give us the man," every last bit of it until he literally had no more to give. I hope someone will continue his life's work now that he's gone.
Rest in peace.
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