Filmfestivals Interview with Henry Bean

The Believer is the Sundance debut of writer/director Henry Bean. The controversial film is based on a true story of a young Jewish teenager who leaves behind his religious orthodox background and becomes a menacing neo-Nazi. The film has been widely praised at Sundance and looks like a strong contender for awards for Best Film, Best Screenplay (Henry Bean) and Best Actor, for 19 year old Ryan Gosling's amazing performance of the young man at war with himself.

Bean was inspired by the book One More Victim, written by The New York times columnist Marc Jacobson based on an article he had written about the arrest of a young man at a Ku Klux Klan rally in New York who is later discovered to be a Jew. Bean described his fascination with this story as "not necessarily being obsessed about being Jewish but in attempting to understand on a deeper level what it means." He himself is married to the daughter of a conservative rabbi and is interested in "the ways that conservative religious beliefs must live side by side with secularism in the modern world."

Bean, who admitted to grappling with his own Jewish identity, however drew the line between his own struggle and that of his lead character. "This project is less about myself and more about this particular character", Bean explained, "however there is certainly a strong connection in the instinct of searching between me and him."

Casting was among the biggest challenges in preparation of the film. The lead character David Balint is on screen almost the entire time, and often is given pages of dialogue to read as inner monologues or fiery speeches. Bean did extensive auditions in New York looking for the perfect young man to play this demanding part. He was frustrated with the candidates he saw until a 19 year old Canadian actor named Ryan Gosling entered the room. "He came in dressed kind of sloppily, with a full head of hair and looked more like a skateboarder than an intense neo-Nazi", Bean said, "but he had an unmistakable charisma that is shared by the character".

For his part, Gosling said that he came to the auditions with very few expectations. "Every young actor in New York was talking about this great part in this great movie," Gosling remembered. While David is "completely different than myself," Gosling saw the role as a "tremendous acting exercise, the challenge to immerse yourself in a character who is often ugly and hurtful but still has strong human qualities." Not least of the challenges for Gosling was the mastering of Hebrew, which he is asked to speak in several key sequences. "I took a crash course," Gosling remembered, "and just delved into the background of the character."

Casting Theresa Russell, known for her sensuous film roles in the films of Ken Russell, as the cold-hearted fascist who is trying to build a new Fascist Party, was also a coup. For Russell's part, she "read the script and wanted to be part of the project". She was, in fact, committed to another picture, but "that project fell apart and suddenly the phone rang and this script arrived". In portraying the steely woman behind the scenes, Russell said she "tried to avoid all the clichés of this kind of character". What she found most frightening was that "the character had no doubts, was completely convinced of the rightness of her point of view, and that is very scary."

While Bean acknowledges that the film will be controversial and that some groups may be shocked or offended by it, he "tried to treat the audience with respect and leave it up to them to make up their own minds". "There are no easy answers….This is a film that can't be wrapped up neatly in a sound byte, it needs to be seen."

- Sandy Mandelberger