Screen Scene
By Daily Bruin Staff
May 16, 2002 9:00 p.m.
“The Believer” Directed by Henry Bean
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Summer Phoenix, Billy Zane
A Nazi walking the streets of New York City is one thing. A
Jewish Nazi walking the streets is a whole other sight. In the
independent film “The Believer,” Ryan Gosling stars as
Danny Balint, a skinhead, a fascist and a closet Jew. An attractive
young man, Balint is intelligent and articulate yet very angry. One
of the opening scenes shows him harassing a young Jewish student
aboard a subway train. When an intimidated boy gets off, Balint
follows him, taunts him and then proceeds to beat him. After this
extremely random act of violence, Balint walks away from the badly
injured boy with a smug satisfaction gracing his face. Inspired by
a true story, the film is about the binaries at odds within Balint.
His beliefs tell him one thing while his heritage argues another.
Most recently seen in “Murder By Numbers,” Gosling
displays his true acting chops in this particular film. The anger
and hatred he expresses are explosive and real. In another scene
involving a reporter, one lift of the eyebrows instills fear in
both the writer and the audience. And then there are moments where
Gosling hints at Balint’s inner vulnerability. Screened at
the Sundance Film Festival last year, director Henry Bean’s
film has a gritty, straightforward look to it. The confrontations
between the characters are presented with a bare bones approach.
Yet Bean controls the complexity within Balint with mastery, pacing
the film like the gentle unraveling of the Torah. Still, by the
film’s end, why Balint does what he does and says what he
says remains unclear. It is his journey to self-realization,
however, that raises interesting psychological questions,
particularly those concerning the conflicts between who one is born
as and who they choose to be. –
Beverly Braga
