Review of The Believer (2001) by Faith S — 21 Mar 2009

So I was doing some fact-checking when preparing to write this article--double-checking the name of the mountain referred to in the title, in this case. It's a thing I sometimes do. When writing my reviews, I have a minimum of two and sometimes four or more tabs open at any one time. It's just how I write the things, really. In this case, I searched Wikipedia for "Abraham," which struck me as the easiest way to find the information I was looking for. (Though it turns out there is a main article on "The Binding of Isaac." So there you are, I suppose.) Anyway, I sort of skimmed the rest of the article, looking for interesting facts to tuck into the back of my brain, another thing I am wont to do. So I got to the "see also" at the bottom of the page, often a source of fascinating avenues of exploration. You get a lot of the expected ones--"Biblical criticism," for example, and "Abrahamic religions." No big deal, right? But there at the top is "1911 Encyclopedia Britannica." I was perplexed. I have now read the entire page on the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica, and other than a brief mention that Wikipedia pages sometimes use research from there--it's in the public domain, you see--I am still perplexed.

Danny Balint (Ryan Gosling) is a neo-Nazi. We first see him harassing then beating up a guy on the train (Peter Meadows). He's on his way to a gathering at the Zampf/Moebius household. While it's true that Danny is the only guy wearing a giant swastika on his t-shirt and an SS button on his jacket, it's pretty apparent that the other guys aren't exactly fond of ethnic diversity, either. Indeed, Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane) and Lina Moebius (Theresa Russell) keep him after the gathering to talk about having him give a few talks here and there. He's such a well-spoken little anti-Semite, after all. And then he gets home, and we see his father (Ronald Guttman) and sister, Linda (Heather Goldenhersh), and we discover that Danny is actually Jewish himself. He constantly flashes back to [i]shul[/i], even as he gets involved with Lina's daughter, Carla (Summer Phoenix; one of those Phoenixes). He is torn--he really does believe the awful things he spouts, but he is, when you get right down to it, Jewish.

There is, of course, much discussion about the various definitions of the word "Jew." Linda is, of course, right when she tells Danny that Hitler would consider him a Jew. There's no way that Danny didn't have a single ethnically Jewish ancestor in eight generations. Leaving that aside, however, Danny has done some fairly intensive study in his life. Even while he and his friends are desecrating a synagogue, even while Danny himself is helping to set a bomb in it, he is extremely protective of a [i]sefer Torah[/i], the great Torah scroll. Indeed, he rescues it, taking the torn scroll home and repairing it. He knows all the intricacies of the faith. He speaks fluent Hebrew, by the sound of things. His views may be, well, unorthodox, but he can argue them quite coherently. Better, I suspect, than many not-crazy Jews can do. Any way you look at it, Danny pretty much just is a Jew.

The first few minutes of this will be hard to get past. Danny gives a tirade at the beginning that's not easy to take. I knew going in what this character was supposed to be, and I wasn't sure I could handle the movie if it was just going to be like that all the way through. However, it was well worth sticking it out. There are some parts that will almost certainly make you feel uncomfortable. They should. It's not a comfortable story. It's based at least loosely on the real-life figure of Daniel Barros, a member of the American Nazi Party who turned out, in fact, to be Jewish himself. Also crazy. I mean, just out there. You don't bring knishes to American Nazi Party meetings, is I guess what I'm saying. Danny, here, is not that kind of crazy at all. He's probably not as smart as Barros (who tested at over 150), but he's a heck of a lot more functional.

There are several interesting characters in this movie. Danny gets the most time and attention, obviously, but Carla develops in a way you might not expect. Some of Danny's old [i]shul[/i] friends put in an appearance later in the film--with [i]Law & Order[/i] regular Tovah Feldshuh in a minor, uncredited role trying to put the lot of them in their place. Not every character has the motivation you would expect. A lot of things change over the course of the movie, too--even though large amounts of the story take place in the ten short days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Or at least, that's when Danny really starts to figure out who he is. Everything from before Rosh Hashana is just prologue.