Believer

By Peter Hemminger

How Ryan Gosling went from Breaker High to this is beyond me. The former A-Channel shipmate plays Daniel Balint, an intelligent young up-and-comer in New York’s fascist underground. His well-spoken arguments and strong anti-Semitism soon attract larger audiences, eager to hear his misguided rantings. With a little bit of guidance from the leaders of an extremist right-wing group, Daniel even has a chance to lead the group to more widespread success, or at least that’s what they hope. All of this might seem a little simplistic, until we learn Daniel’s secret: he’s Jewish.

From this premise, Gosling creates an intricate web of self-loathing, denial and hatred, spewing out arguments so convincing that Roger Ebert feared the movie “could do more harm than good.” Daniel is obsessed with his culture, with what he perceives as weakness and the masochism inherent in it. The performance is as strong as Edward Norton’s in American History X, another conflicted neo-Nazi film, and that’s a serious compliment.

While the film doesn’t exactly offer answers, it provides plenty of questions, and does so in a way that doesn’t allow the viewer to tear their eyes from the screen. No other film this year was as powerful, intelligent and thought-provoking as The Believer.

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