35 Up's portrayal of Neil (above, at 7, 14, 21, 28, and 35; he's one of the subjects in Michael Apted's series of films about a group of British kids) is dramatic, sad, and weirdly hopeful. Neil's decline into a tramp-like instability is accompanied by the tremendous cinematic contrast between his coherence in interviews and his nervous body language of shuffling and ceaseless rocking. Apted seems to suggest that we all know someone like Neil -- an eccentric, marginal, or homeless person -- but without the access to the seven-year-old that we get in The Up Series.
