21 (1977, no director credited) [Michael Apted] (Patreon)

[ANAL-RETENTIVE LOGGING CORNER: Though it's been retitled 21 Up to conform with subsequent installments, the series' third check-in is simply called 21 onscreen (just as its second is called 7 + Seven). And there's no director credit on the early ones, which were produced for the BBC with no expectation of any theatrical release; 28 Up was the first to become a "film."]

Watched this nearly six months ago but never wrote anything. Starting to get more interesting now as paths diverge across class lines, but inevitably all of the upper-class kids are at university, which means nothing terribly exciting is going on in their lives (as far as a viewing audience is concerned, at least). I was most intrigued here by Charles, who radiates a deep suspicion of institutions from which he's mostly benefited, but that's probably because I know that after this installment he drops out of the series, never to return thus far (despite going into documentary filmmaking himself—he was one of the producers on Touching the Void, for example).

Gotta say there's a huge difference between watching these films in your youth and watching them in middle age. Impossible now not to think back on what I was doing during the relevant year, and how that might have come across had I been filmed. At 14 (1982), I resembled the three rich boys, minus the self-conscious entitlement (I was utterly oblivious to my privilege)—had just started attending an expensive, exclusive "college preparatory," where I got straight A's freshman year and was evidently in the carpool lane to success. Seven years later, in 1989, I'd been kicked out of the prep school, dropped out of public school (from which I never did graduate), spent time both homeless and in jail, and was still mostly floundering around with no apparent direction. Metamorphosed from Andrew into Neil between installments. (All of this without any drug or alcohol problem, incidentally!) And then I'd completely turned myself around again by 28. Let's not even get into the possible weight fluctuations...