"The Believer" (2001) - Movie Review

To live is to believe in something. Well known thing is religion. People right from their small age either abide it by the way it’s been taught or hate it because of its limitations on their freedom. Some may even compromise to see some happiness in their loved one’s face. At certain age when the society calls them adults and they realize the power of it, things start to slowly strip off. A time to face what one really believes in. It might be cruelly truthful that many reject it. They start living in denial. What Daniel Balint (Ryan Gosling) does is that he accepts it, for the most part.

The movie was inspired by a true event in the sixties when a guy who was in the American Nazi Party was a Jew. It was printed on the New York Times and not able to digest it, he committed suicide. The movie of course touches the mother of all sensitivity. It is surrounded by the beliefs and the hatred towards it. Daniel Balint in the movie is one of the orthodox Jew to say the least. He uses them to say how well he studies the enemy. Yes, he calls them enemies. The film initially shows his hatred for the Jews and the way his power towers him up. In the first chain of scenes wherein he slowly follows, disturbs and finally beats up a Jew reveals what he is. And the way he acts in showing his hatred is more of young kid trying to be powerful and believes to be more right in his thoughts. He is the kid who is at the age I was talking about when reality kicks in a very bad way.

He attends a fascist movement meeting. He voices the opinion of killing Jews which of course triggers many. One of the head Lina (Theresa Russell) likes his way of spitting out things with nice touch of convinced feeling of hatred. There he meets Carla (Summer Phoenix) and the attraction is expected. Lina asks Daniel to come to another retreat in a distant place away from New York. At the retreat he asks Carla when he can see her. She refuses but he insists. She asks him to come through the window to make him witness her act which in turn will make generally make any man create hate towards her. He is surprised at what he sees but immediately sees her in the eye with an understanding and sorrow. Daniel is a man confused but lucid in his expressions.

After the first meeting with Lina, Curtis (Billy Zane), the main head shows concerns Daniel’s inclusion and Lina says that he is a good thinker and Curtis replies, “He speaks well”. Daniel is the master of articulating the dreadful into more dreadful with better conviction to make it believe. Of course he has made himself believe that right from when he was a kid. Daniel is a man of different stature. He is a man with independent thoughts when he was kid; it gets the treatment to stir his hatred. The film while contains the in depth details of analyzing the religion and how it’s been followed, it is in reality a story of this one single mind. It is more appalling and grabs the attention because it touches something which people hesitate to talk about loud in a group. The belief could have been anything and the emotions would be the same.

Still religion is something which has the power of invisibility and things made out of thin air. There is no problem in one following a particular religion, belief and values. The problem comes when the other member of different religion, belief and values starts to desecrate and tries to ridicule it. I am in actuality trying to have the thought of no religion and accept the existence of being a human. But it does not give me the right to ask other people to do the same. It becomes an individual choice and it needs to be respected. Daniel thinks it in a total different perspective. The belief and hatred has converted him to question it to ridicule and it builds upon to opt eradicating them totally. He feels they always pose weak and they will feel nothing if they are not hated. But deep inside him, he loves the prayers or the rituals of it. And when he sees it, as director Henry Bean said in the interview, his integrity and purity makes him to accept it. The belief he had for most of his life starts to fight with it. This turmoil inside makes him to feel the powerful and painful agony. At this juncture Ryan Gosling’s performance is a compulsive mention. This movie marks his status of being the best in the current generation of actors. I can go on and on about his terrific presence but I will leave it to the viewers to watch it.

“The Believer” will offend many people very brutally. Apart from profanity and also group of people being profaned upon, it does something crueler. It identifies the truth in many which will offend to push in denial. It might scare a lot of people and also attract many. Both of them need to look it as the point for identifying and learning. The movie helps in identifying but learning lies with us.

It does not have a statement. At the end of it, there cannot be much concluded. As said by director Henry Bean in his interview that a Rabbi who watched the movie seems to say that it did not have any redemption. It has it in the ending in a mystical cryptic way. The search of existence is continued with nothing above. It is for and against religion. It is for and against love. And sadly and quite believably argues the point of hate in a convincing manner to identify it within us. It says that it is a feeling. It feels good. It gives reasons for the inability of people who hates and also who wants to be hated. When it is expressed and acknowledged it gives power and excuses. The belief in it is mightier and makes some one bold enough to do anything and hide from the truth. And when they do that, they are lost in their own soul witnessing hell in the form of guilt. They are left with hating themselves when there is no one out there to be hated. “The Believer” asks to not believe on anything but be open for everything.