Robert Drake in Where I Am (Philadelphia QFest)

In 1999, Robert Drake was a promising young gay American author and editor who went to Ireland partly in pursuit of what he calls that “whole Yeats thing.” He was also looking to find promising new authors to include in an anthology he was editing.

He fell in love, both with the country and with Kieran Slevin, with whom he began a committed relationship. In Sligo, Kieran’s hometown, Robert was savagely beaten by two young men who later claimed he had hit on them—a crime for which no explanation will ever suffice. The attack left him with a brain injury that affected his speech and sense of balance. He cannot walk unaided and no longer has the attention span to continue his writing.

One of Robert’s close friends maintains that pre-attack Robert “is dead,” yet the affability and kindness that drew so many to him has endured. That this friendliness may have brewed hatred in the heart of his homophobic assailants is a cruel irony. But Robert, a spiritual man and practicing Quaker, seems to hold no enmity toward them. Both men served prison sentences, and forgiveness is “over and done with,” Robert says.

What does this forgiveness mean, and how did he come to it? This point the filmmakers fail to examine more closely. On a return trip to Ireland, 12 years after the attack, Robert attempts to contact these men, and both refuse to meet with him. Is this disappointing to him? What would he have wanted to say or ask? These questions are not posed.

It’s possible that director Pamela Drynan took a light touch on such sensitive issues because Robert may still be in a fragile place in terms of his emotional recovery. At one point, he breaks down upon seeing his former apartment in Dublin. It is a horrific, haunting moment as his grief overwhelms him completely. But if that is the case, if Drynan did not want to push, then the impact of the film is a bit muted.

There is no question that Robert Drake is extraordinary and his story moving. His remarkable lack of self-pity nurtures sympathy for him and our disgust for what happened. Robert is happy to be alive, but we can’t help but mourn the future that was forever denied him and the world. It’s possible that this is enough, or at least all that can be hoped for: a film that allows for quiet meditation on the personal cost of a single act of violence, and the hope that decency will ultimately prevail.