Henry Bean in Le Figaro

Danny Balint, native of Boston (sic), as a precocious school child disputes the Jewish religion of his fathers. He is notably vexed by the sacrifice of Abraham, which he sees as servile obeisance to a tyrannical God. As an adolescent, his revolt brings him into the milieu of neo-Nazis, brutal skinheads as well as bourgeois intellectuals. As much of an extremist as he appears, Danny Balint remains intimately tied to Judaism.

Critique: It’s this contradiction that the writer/director Henry Bean explores with the rigor and sang-froid such a disorienting subject requires. Inspired by a real case, the film analyses in depth the pathological and metaphysical self-hatred of a tortured heart and unbalanced intelligence. As a bonus, the film is instructive on the subject of American neo-Nazism. And the young actor, Ryan Gosling, is excellent.

His Film “Danny Balint” is a Portrait of a Young Jewish Nazi. Henry Bean and Extreme Paradox

In 1965, The New York Times published an interview with Daniel Burros, twenty-eight years old, a member of the Ku Klux Klan arrested a racist demonstration, and revealed the Jewish origins of the delinquent. Burros killed himself the day the article appeared. This singular case of a Jewish Nazi has long intrigued the novelist and screenwriter Henry Bean: screenplay projects, workshops, a short film, diverse sketches preceded “Danny Balint,” his first full-length film as director, grand prize winner at the 2001 Sundance Festival.

Obviously this piece is the result of long reflection and is not a sensationalistic potboiler. To speak of a Jewish Nazi is bound to cause passionate reactions. This is not the aim of “Danny Balint.” The film departs from the news story elements to create a personality analyzed with much vigor and depth, remarkably interpreted by young Ryan Gosling. It is a character study of an individual in extremis, enemy of himself, a deep view into the paradoxes of the human heart.

“Daniel is obviously obsessed by self-hatred,” says Henry Bean, “but personally, this aspect interests me less than the contradiction. Self-hatred is the beginning of a dialectic of self-transcendence.”

Who is Danny Balint? A precocious child, expelled from religious school because of his insolent challenge of authority. Possessing not only a deft intelligence, but an ambitious soul, he disputes as equal with the Almighty Himself, reproaching Him both for despotism and non-existence. The sacrifice of Isaac, taught as an example of Abraham’s faith, represents to Danny the caprice of a tyrannical God, who wishes to show that He is all and man is nothing.

“I haven’t made a realistic film,” comments Bean, “and the story of Abraham, which returns throughout the film, is a cinematic idea which expresses my own reflection on the Jewish religion, which I had hardly practiced, but which my wife, the daughter of a rabbi, shed new light on. In particular, she showed me the extent to which my way of thinking was influenced by this tradition. What struck me is that Judaism works quite well without God. This God, whom we cannot name, describe or approach, is like a person who is never there. It really doesn’t matter whether one believes or not, what matters is to observe the Law. ‘The Law is God,’ says [Emmanuel] Levinas. An abstract God translated into concrete precepts.”

As an adolescent, Danny hates to be a Jew. “He seeks to oppose it, and becomes a Nazi,” says the filmmaker. “But when he finds himself among militants of the extreme right or neo-Nazi skinheads, he find them odious and boring. He resists integration and assimilation. He is young and self-dramatizing. He wants to embody all of his contradictions, because he can’t transcend them. Then his girlfriend, Carla (Summer Phoenix) seeks something she can obey, deeply, something to which she can surrender her will.

And for Henry Bean, this is the secret heart of the film:

“Everyone is looking for something bigger than himself, not for pleasure, but for his freedom. Maybe religion is a metaphor for this aspiration, and God, the name we give to that aspect transcending earthly life that we require. At the end of the film, I thought to have Danny the Jew killed by a bomb set by Danny the Nazi. My wife suggested the final plan, a stair that mounts indefinitely, where the same rabbi is met on each landing.”

Obsessive repetition and ascension without cease to death or to rebirth?

- Marie-Noelle Tranchant