FilmBlather.com

"Why do we hate the Jew?"

The Believer is an eccentric, difficult film, posing questions it can't answer, expecting viewers to be satisfied -- nay, fulfilled -- by a conflict with no resolution. From the very first frames of this based-on-a-true-story indie -- it begins with a harrowing depiction of the title character harrassing a feeble Orthodox Jew -- we know that there is no possible way for this story to end well, no solution other than destruction. Still, our eyes remain glued to the screen, compelled at first by the superficial peculiarity of the subject matter, then by the disarming humanity of the subject himself, portrayed by the fiery Ryan Gosling.

Gosling, if you remember, was the best thing in Murder by Numbers, and before then the comic relief in the mediocre Remember the Titans. The Believer is his first starring role, a film so polarizing that, after winning awards at Sundance in 2001 (it was filmed before Numbers was), languished without a distributor for a year before airing on Showtime to rave reviews and then finally picking up a limited release. This isn't one of those instances when I wonder self-righteously why in the world everyone isn't rushing to see this rather than the latest cineplex popcorn muncher. It's not for everyone.

And yet those who are looking for a challenging movie excursion and are willing to put up with the lack of instant gratification would do very well to seek this one out. It is the story of Danny Balint who, as a young Hebrew school student got himself kicked out by challenging his teacher to defend God. The man upstairs is a bully, he maintained, a power-hungry narcissist who told Abraham to kill his son not to test his faith but to exert His authority.

A decade later, the fiercely intelligent Balint will have joined the Nazi Party, and used his formidable verbal chops to curry favor with the wealthier, more thoughtful Fascists, one of them played by a rather hippie-ish Billy Zane. His conflict of loyalties, then, is not only between his heritage and his mind's stubborn denial of it, but also between the violent instincts nurtured by his skinhead pals and the oratory cultivated by the Fascists.

The clash between the two halves of Danny Balint sometimes takes on a completely literal dimension, as exemplified in the scene where he puts on a Jewish prayer shawl and starts marching around giving Nazi salutes. Described, it sounds unbelievably hokey; on screen, it's resonant precisely because it illustrates the ultimate intransigence of his situation. And when Balint goes in to terrorize a synagogue, only to berate his Nazi buddies about their ignorance of the Jewish faith, we know the deal is sealed: there's no way out of this.

We're right, it turns out. The ending is intriguing, inconclusive, extremely symbolic; interested not in making a statement on Jews or Nazis but in giving us a hint, a tiny peephole into Balint's motivation, the source of the inner battle that was his undoing. Still, it doesn't come up with anything concrete, nor should it, though perhaps afterward, with a cup of coffee, you can.