The Jerusalem Post Review

The Believer ****

Nothing is as rare in the movies as a film about ideas that manages to bring them to life, and Henry Bean has achieved this in his directorial debut with The Believer.

The fact-based story of an Orthodox Jew who becomes a neo-Nazi, The Believer is exceptionally disturbing because it forces the audience to struggle with questions most of us thought we put to rest when we were around 16. And it provokes us to do this by presenting a main character who, by every standard most of us hold, is utterly reprehensible, and then seduces us into identifying with him.

How does Bean (who wrote the screenplay as well as directed the film) pull this off? Simply because Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling, in a stunning performance) the protagonist, is both charismatic and utterly uncompromising. He refuses to ignore the contradictions about Judaism that most of us have made some accommodation to in order to get through our, lives but embraces them, in spite of the fact that this embrace leads him onto a dangerous, crazy path. Loosely based on the true story of Daniel Burros, a member of the Ku Klux Klan who was interviewed by a New York Times reporter in the mid-Sixties and then committed suicide when that newspaper revealed that he was Jewish, the film opens with a striking juxtaposition. It's not a subtle opening, nor a subtle movie, but like almost everything about The Believer, it works. We hear a child in a yeshiva argue with his teacher about the Biblical story of the Akeda - God's command to Abraham to sacrifice his treasured son, Isaac - while Danny, clearly a skinhead, works out alone in his apartment.

Then Danny harasses and beats a teenaged yeshiva student on the subway and the street, taunting him, "Do you think God is going to provide a f***in' ram instead of you?" Danny works at a menial job, and joins a politically sophisticated fascist group in New York City arguing that its leader, the charismatic Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane), should make persecuting the Jews a priority. Zampf, however, has no such intention, but he and his backer, Lena Moebius (Theresa Russell) give Danny a job as an outreach youth leader in their movement.

In an interview with a New York Times reporter writing about the fascist group, Danny reiterates his desire to go after the Jews, calling the modern world "a Jewish disease" and shocking the reporter by glibly attacking what he terms Jewish sexual habits. Danny's rants to the reporter in several interview scenes are a brilliant, appalling and comic mixture of sense and nonsense.

Disillusioned with the fascists because of their lack of anti-Semitism (although he does become romantically involved with Moebius's daughter Carla, played by Summer Phoenix), Danny joins a group of skinheads who live in a rural area. Even here, he is something of an outcast. While they are more interested in guzzling beer and brawling, he goads them into vandalizing a synagogue and encourages them to murder prominent Jewish leaders. But they are just thugs. In one of the film's most disturbing scenes, as they trash the empty synagogue, Danny quotes Eichmann. "Who's Eichmann?" sneers one of them.

Scenes of Danny as a child, arguing about the Akeda recur throughout, and are the key to explaining how he went from the yeshiva to hanging around with skinheads. It's clear that Abraham's submission to God, in Danny's eyes, has created a Jewish tradition of martyrdom and weakness, of which he wants no part.

This obsession with Jewish weakness is what drives him, but that's all we really learn about his inner life, and we need to know more. In a few underdeveloped scenes, he visits his sister and father, who apparently know nothing about his life except that he is no longer observant. While it's admirable that Bean gives no pat psychobabble explanations for the violence of Danny's rage, the portrait of him is frustratingly incomplete. When at a certain point the violence he has set in motion becomes too much for him, it's not clear why.

There are other, less important flaws. The movie, partly due to its low budget and its director's inexperience, is flat visually. What's vivid here are the words, not the images.

The film has garnered many awards, including the coveted Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival this year, as well as the Grand Jury Prize at the Moscow Film Festival in the summer. Distributors, fearing controversy, have refused to show it in the United States, as has the US cable television network Showtime, which yanked it from its schedule after the events of September 11.

The distributors were right to worry; this film will offend many. But I suspect lots of viewers will respond, not with simple disgust, but with the wish to respond to Danny. They'll want to grab Bean by the arm (since they can't get actually get to Danny) and argue with him, set him straight, tell him off; or alternatively, thank him, and tell him how much this line or that line echoed thoughts they've had themselves. I can guarantee one thing: You will love this film or you will hate it, but you won't be bored.

- Hannah Brown