The Believer

From AwardAnnals

Reviews

Amazon.com

With The Believer, his first film as director, screenwriter Henry Bean wastes no time in going for the jugular. In the opening scene a timid Yeshiva student is chased off a New York subway train, racially abused and savagely beaten up by a ranting skinhead, and from then on in the level of hatred and violence rarely abates. But the passion that fuels the film is as much psychological as physical. The skinhead Danny Balint is the film’s protagonist, and his anti-Semitic venom has an unusual cause: he’s Jewish himself.

Bean, whose previous work as a scriptwriter (Mulholland Falls and the like) has been accomplished but not exceptional, tackles this fraught subject with a strong sense of personal commitment. He doesn’t go for easy targets, either. Like Edward Norton’s character in American History X, Danny is no mindless thug: he’s intelligent and frighteningly articulate, and he can argue his case with mouth and brains no less than with fists and boots. The film traces his attitude back to his schooldays, when he revolted against the unquestioning submission to Orthodox doctrine that his teachers tried to instil. Faced with a group of Holocaust survivors he denounces them for their passivity in the face of oppression. “Kill your enemies!” he tells them scornfully.

There’s a lot of talk in this film, and several of the characters are little more than mouthpieces for their respective views. (If Bernard Shaw had ever written a play about anti-Semitism, it might have come out rather like this.) But the play of ideas is passionate and deeply felt, and as the tormented Danny, constantly drawn back to the faith he despises, Ryan Gosling gives a riveting performance. This is an intense, anguished film that dares to pose deeply disquieting questions.—Philip Kemp

Barnes and Noble

A riveting, thought-provoking, and complex work, this winner of the 2000 Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival has been kept under wraps for too long. Initially shunned by distributors because of its daring, controversial subject matter, the film was first aired on Showtime and finally made it to some theaters in the spring of 2003. Inspired by the true story of a Ku Klux Klan member who was revealed to be Jewish in an article in The New York Times, The Believer recounts the transformation of a clever, argumentative yeshiva boy from Brooklyn into a violent neo-fascist skinhead. Canadian actor Ryan Gosling anchors the film with his volcanic and unforgettable portrayal of Danny Balint, a young man trapped in a vortex of destructive psychological contradictions. Director and screenwriter Henry Bean (Enemy at the Gates) appears to know his terrain, depicting with gritty verisimilitude both the clandestine skinhead world and the insular community of committed Orthodox Jews in New York. Billy Zane and Theresa Russell are convincing as Danny’s mentors in the right-wing underground. Russell is particularly effective, masterfully incarnating “the banality of evil.” Summer Phoenix has an interesting turn as their brilliant but unmoored teenage daughter. Although Bean’s screenplay raises more questions than it answers, and at times strains credulity, it is never less than engrossing, intellectually challenging, and emotionally explosive. The Believer, a significant work that has sparked more than its share of debate, builds to an understated yet heart-pounding and devastating climax. David Sobel