Ryan Gosling plays a Jewish neo-Nazi in THE BELIEVER, his stunning lead debut. Courtesy of Peacock.If you ever do a Google search for “Jewish films,” you probably won’t find THE BELIEVER at the top of the list. It’s a movie so disturbing, so dark and vile, so intense that none of it feels like a movie. You feel like these are real people initiating actual hate crimes, lost people who have been brainwashed to believe that minorities shouldn’t exist. It’s not at all a pleasant film, but it’s not supposed to be. The characters and scenes in THE BELIEVER we see happen all the time on the news. Movies, especially Hollywood ones, tend to shy away from displaying harsh topics in such a brutal, realistic light. This little indie shows you how it is. Antisemites, racists, right-wing extremists, etc. are all over the place, hidden in the shadows of our everyday lives. Recreating violent extremism isn’t a pretty thing to do because, well, need I explain? It’s horrible! However, THE BELIEVER does this with searing audacity. This is one of the most frightening films I’ve seen in a long time.
THE BELIEVER, directed and co-written by Philly native Sean Bean, debuted at the Sundance Film Festival in 2001 where it showcased the performance of a little-known actor: RYAN. GOSLING. You heard that right! Before he was an Oscar nominee and swooning ladies across the globe with his good looks and charm, Gosling was an unknown Canadian actor filming small roles in films and shows like Remember the Titans (2000) and Are You Afraid of the Dark? (1990-2000). (And let’s not forget The Mickey Mouse Club.) THE BELIEVER was his first leading role, and just watching his performance made me picture the hundreds of critics who probably saw this movie 22 years ago and went, “Damn. That is one great actor with a future ahead of him.”
Gosling isn’t just a pretty boy with six-pack abs. Sure, we’ve all seen his comic side (his next big movie this summer: Barbie), but he’s not a ditsy actor just in it for the laughs. This guy can take on any dramatic role that comes his way and dominate the screen with his character. Having not been trained as a serious actor, I am always amazed to believe how actors can just flip that switch and perform a dramatic scene so naturally. In any Gosling performance, there’s never a flinch or subtle lack of concentration. His expressions and body language prove it. Even if he’s performing a schmaltzy romantic scene in The Notebook (2004), he’s believable. He’s in the zone, and as a viewer, you just can’t wait to see what he’ll do next.
“Charisma” is perhaps the obvious word to describe Gosling, especially in his lead debut. The actor has this remarkable ability to play flawed or dislikable characters that we are somehow so drawn too. In THE BELIEVER, Gosling plays the unthinkable: a Jewish neo-Nazi. His character, a twentysomething man named Danny, flaunts his antisemitism, sauntering down the streets of New York City in a swastika t-shirt and beating up a Jewish man he sees on the subway.
“The modern world is a Jewish disease,” he tells a journalist in one scene. “Judaism is like a sickness… A Jew resorts to perversions… They undermine traditional rights.”
If you’re disturbed already, I hate to break it to you, but THE BELIEVER goes even more extreme. Danny is such a confusing man because he’s secretly a Jew himself. Bean crosscuts scenes of present-day Danny with him as a child at a yeshiva where he argues with his teacher about the story of the Binding of Isaac. He complains that the story is a lie because it really depicts God as a sadistic bully. Throughout the film, we get other, smaller hints as to why Danny became the whitehead he is today. What exactly happened to this lost soul? Is there a secret love of Judaism that Danny still carries in his heart?
THE BELIEVER works in its ambiguity. There isn’t one moment that caused Danny to become a neo-Nazi. His family is secular, but they don’t seem entirely disturbed that a member of their family is a self-hating Jew. When his sister accosts him for his beliefs, she seems oddly calm about it. It’s like a sister flicking her sibling on the shoulder and saying, “Knock it off.” His father, as we see in one scene, is even less concerned about his son. They watch TV on the Sabbath, a forbidden action for traditional Jews, and he has no bother that his son is dangerous.
So if the family isn’t a factor in Danny’s neo-Nazism, what is? I think the more you watch THE BELIEVER, the more you conclude that Danny is just an independent thinker who has removed himself from reality. Perhaps the strict teachings at his yeshiva drove him to madness. Perhaps the constant reminders that he’s a Jew and he must follow the Torah drove him to such extremes. Furthermore, perhaps Danny’s disagreements with his Torah teachings made him such a threat to society. How? We never really know.
When we often read about neo-Nazis in the news, the story is usually that they were raised that way or brainwashed by some kind of cult or extreme right group. That isn’t really the case with Danny, as well as some of the other characters in THE BELIEVER. Carla (Summer Phoenix, excellent) is one example. The daughter of a group of fascists led by Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane), she soon embarks on an affair with Danny. She is damaged from the beginning. Before Danny and she have sex for the first time, he asks her to “hurt” her. In an even stranger sequence, she asks Danny to come to her room later. When he does, he discovers her having sex with another man. The look she gives him is eerie in that she takes pleasure in Danny’s humiliation. This is someone who has no morals, no understanding of what’s right or wrong.
Carla is not a sympathetic character at all, but similar to Danny, she interests us in her growing fascination with Judaism. After finding a stolen Torah scroll in Danny’s apartment one night, she asks a lot of questions. Danny, even more so than his lover, hides his “fascination,” let’s say, with Judaism by stealing tzitzit from a synagogue and hiding it under his shirt while he goes about his day. What is this about? I think the ultimate cause is this: Danny can’t run from his identity. No matter how far the lengths he’ll go to, no matter how vicious and violent he’ll become, he can’t evade his religion.
THE BELIEVER is like a story of salvation, except that it’s not. You want to punch Danny in the face, but you also want to bring out this strange, twisted sympathy he carries. He seems abandoned by his religion, his identity more so. Is there some kind of remorse hidden deep in his soul?
“Why didn’t you just kill the Nazi when he had your son?!” he emotionally yells at a Holocaust survivor in one scene.
There’s a lot to swallow in this movie. It’s remarkable how such a low-budget, obscure movie can sink its teeth into our brains so strongly. THE BELIEVER is a downer, but its ingenious writing opens a door into the human psyche. It questions why so many hateful people are the way they are, and Gosling’s committed performance reminds us why he’s one of the best actors around today.
See this movie with all your might, but just be warned: it’s VERY dark.
THE BELIEVER is now available to stream on Peacock.