**/****
directed by Clive Gordon
by Travis Mackenzie Hoover Can a film have a wealth of new information and still be a failure? If the film is Clive Gordon's The Lost Boys, the answer is an unfortunate "yes." Dealing with the ultimate fate of some of the "lost boys" of the Sudan, who fled to northern Kenya when they were attacked by the Arab army, it shows a handful of the 3,500 who were selected for resettling in America. On the plus side, it shows a process that rarely is seen on film, that of people struggling to adjust to a new culture: The "boys" have to adjust to the Byzantine ways of their new home and suffer the indignity of menial "entry-level" jobs at the bottom of the American dream. But the film never really investigates the opinions of its subjects. Subtly, it objectifies them, rarely asking them directly how they feel, instead simply staring at them as they mutely deal with the various helpers and the ridiculous harshness of American culture. The film cries out for some interviews where the young men can vent some steam, or at least give a personal viewpoint as to how things are going. It's simply not enough to offer admittedly impressive compositions and an incidental classical greatest-hits score as proper insight into how someone is thinking, and so The Lost Boys suppresses as much as it reveals.
