Maclean's Article

Ryan Gosling was promoting The Believer -- in which he plays a young Jewish yeshiva student turned neo-Nazi skinhead -- at the Toronto International Film Festival on Sept. 11. Watching the footage of United Airlines Flight 175 crash into the south tower of the World Trade Center, the native of Cornwall, Ont., sat in stunned silence, holding his head in his hands. When his publicist switched off the TV so that he could talk about the movie, the 20-year-old turned and said: "It's so meaningless now."

That's true for more than one reason. Both The Believer's Sept. 30 premiere on American cable TV and its theatrical release early next year have been postponed indefinitely as a result of the events that morning. "The film contains provocative subject matter and images," explains Daniel Diamond, president of Fireworks Pictures, its distributor. "The public is having to digest too much right now. It is better to wait." Gosling reluctantly agrees, although that doesn't temper his disappointment. "It's hard to get a movie like this shown in North America at the best of times."

The Believer, in fact, is well outside the mainstream, not the least in casting an unknown to play Danny Balint, whose test of faith leads him into the arms of Fascists. Gosling, a veteran of the Mickey Mouse Club and the less-than-seminal teen TV shows Breaker High and Young Hercules, admits it was hard for him to even get an audition for this movie. "I just begged, begged, begged to get in." After winning the role, Gosling lifted weights to achieve an intimidating skinhead physique, and studied Hebrew with Leora Barish, a rabbi's daughter and the wife of Believer director Henry Bean. Most important, Gosling is able to illuminate Danny's unfathomable contradiction -- he seems to love Judaism as much as he hates it. All the time he is raising money for Fascists and planting bombs in synagogues, he continues to study the Torah and tend to a sacred scroll that his band of thugs vandalized.

The film's disturbing nature -- Danny's intimate knowledge of Judaism makes his anti-Semitic invective all the more upsetting -- didn't bode well for Hollywood support until The Believer took the Grand Jury Prize at this year's Sundance Film Festival. Studios were just starting to bite when a rabbi condemned a section of the film as "a primer for anti-Semitism." "It's been a roller-coaster," says Gosling. "First, people love it, then they hate it, then everybody wants it, then nobody wants it." Eventually, U.S. cable channel Showtime picked it up and Fireworks agreed to release it theatrically after its television debut. Films that play first on TV are ineligible for Academy Award consideration. That's unfortunate for Gosling, since the rising star gives an Oscar-calibre performance in Believer.

While it's true that the film will most likely have a better reception later, its profound message is worth exploring now. "I think that anyone who sees it and really experiences it would find it very hard afterward to go out and hate another group," wrote Bean long before Sept. 11. "They'll have seen that any group is better at hating itself than an outsider ever could; and they'll have seen how close their own hatred is to love."

In the tense atmosphere following the attacks, actor Gosling is not the only artist to find himself at the centre of unforeseen controversy. When the Canadian Museum of Civilization in Hull, Que., announced it was postponing The Lands Within Me -- an Oct. 19 exhibit featuring the work of 26 Arab-Canadian artists -- several of the artists involved reacted angrily. The museum said it wanted to beef up educational content in light of increased anti-Arab sentiment. But Vancouver multimedia artist Jayce Salloum contended that by heavily contextualizing the work, the museum was "sending out a message that work by Arabs needs to be 'spin-controlled' to make it palatable." And because racist attacks are on the rise, he said, "now, more than ever, is the time to make a statement." Clearly, Jean Chretien agreed. "If it is good for March, 2002," the Prime Minister said, "it is good for October, 2001." Three days later, the museum reversed its decision.

Meanwhile, reaction to Wide Mouth Mason drummer Safwan Javed's candid remarks about Sept. 11 was sharp. The Saskatoon-based musician of Pakistani descent told The Edmonton Sun he did not condone the terrorist attacks. But, he added, "I think both sides have been as guilty as each other of committing so-called terrorist acts." Javed is philosophical about a few menacing responses. "It's a really emotional time and people move easily to vengeance, wrath and violence."

- Shanda Deziel and Sue Ferguson