At the heart of the documentary The Human Experience (out on DVD) is a high-spirited crew of young men from Brooklyn's St. Francis House, a group home for disadvantaged youth. By definition they aren't from the top of the social order, and yet they chose to descend to those less fortunate in a triptych of discovery in places close to home and far away. The boys began by spending many winter nights and days on the streets of NYC with the homeless before proceeding to an orphanage in Peru and, finally, to Ghana, where their encounter with the country's joyous culture suddenly gave way to AIDS victims and even a leper colony.
Unfortunately, director Charles Kinnane sweetens the concept with mood music and cable channel production gloss. Also, one can always question the effect of a camera's presence on anything; did the young men fully experience the danger of homelessness with even a small film crew standing by?
But despite all this, The Human Experience makes many profound points with the help of interviews with activist Alveda King, Rabbi Simon Jacobson and other philosophers, physicians and humanists. What comes through is the dignity inherent in humanity despite the tragic dimension of our experience, the universal search for faith and transcendence and the inescapable value of supportive family life. The young men from St. Francis House already knew this last one first hand, coming from families broken or with little love.
