If given the choice, would you be willing to leave the comforts of America to spend the rest of your life living with the poorest of the poor because they need love and you have this overwhelming need to give love? Would you risk the fear of closeness and death to be able to offer to others, specifically children, a fully embodied love? Are you willing to choose to be uncomfortable for the sake of love?
Blood Brother, the documentary film that won both the Grand Jury Prize and Audience Award for Documentary Filmmaking at this year’s (2013) Sundance Film Festival, asks these questions through the life of the film’s subject, Rocky Braat.
About five years ago after graduating from art school, Rocky decided to travel to India with a friend for a few months to get some perspective on life. While there he spent a couple of weeks working at a center which is a refuge, home, orphanage, and safe space for women and children infected with HIV/AIDS.
After these few weeks, Rocky left to finish his tour of India, but within a few days of being away he found that he missed the people, especially the children, at the center and returned spending the rest of his time in India working and living at the center. The realization that these children had captured his heart was an interesting one for a man who previously “didn’t really like kids.”
As he wrestled with the options of what to do now, one came to the surface and has shaped the trajectory of Rocky’s life: “I can’t take them (the children and people within the community) out of that position, but I can put myself into that position,” Rocky said. And this is what he has chosen to do – let go of his life in the United States to live in India and serve this community. In essence Rocky has chosen for the sake of love and others to give up the possibility of a “life of ease” for a life of suffering.
I think what makes Rocky’s story and the film so compelling is the ease in which love and care flow out of him into his chosen community. He does not allow his fear of death or intimacy with those who could at any moment die to get in the way of the present task at hand which is care and love. Over and over again in Rocky, I saw the face of one whose love is stronger than repulsion and fear.
Like the images and stories of Mother Teresa with the lepers, in a holistic way, the film shows Rocky as an embodiment of tender care. On camera he and the children are honest about the times when he looses it emphasizing the power of his stance of care even in the imperfections of being a fallible human. What is revealed about this man, beyond his heart and actions of care is his full presence in each moment of each day. The care and love he engaged in is contoured by his presence in the moment and with the people before him, if nothing else, Rocky is present.
At one point in the film one of the boys, Suyra, has contracted something that is causing all the blood vessels in his body to rupture leading to sores and skin literally flaking and pealing off his tender body. Rocky doesn’t miss a beat, but immediately steps in to care for his wounds, encourage Suyra, and offering one of his “children,” if nothing else, a gracious death in his otherwise hopeless situation. As Surya, contrary to diagnosis, recovers, one has to wonder if part of the healing and restoration came from the tender, gentle touch of someone who loved him?
The striking thing about Blood Brother is that it is not a challenge or a incitement of the viewer to sell everything, move to India and care for the poor. Rather it shows the truth of living life in a stance of hospitality and care towards others. It leaves one questioning, “Who is my neighbor and how can I embody love and hospitality to them?”
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Jessi Knippel works for Dirty Laundry TV finding lost british bands, shooting photos, and helping things run smoothly. She also assists Malia James (photographer, filmmaker, & bass player for The Dum Dum Girls), is working on a documentary film exploring the relationship between art and faith, seeks out live music, travels on various adventures, helps others on their creative projects while dreaming up her own, takes photographs, and is learning as many marketable skills as possible so that someday art can be the way she pays her bills. Follow along on her own website.