The Believer movie storyline. Daniel Balint is a former Jewish yeshiva student, brilliant but troubled, who is now a fanatically violent Neo-Nazi in New York in his early twenties. As a child, he often challenged his teachers with unorthodox interpretations of scripture. He once argued that the Binding of Isaac was not about Abraham’s faith but God’s power: that God did not want Abraham to accomplish a particular task but instead asks unquestioning obedience, which Abraham refuses to give. He concluded that God is a bully.
Daniel finds a meeting of fascists run by Curtis Zampf and Lina Moebius, where he also makes a connection with Lina’s daughter Carla. Daniel advocates killing Jews, and a banker named Manzetti in particular, but Curtis and Lina oppose harming Jews on practical if not moral grounds. Impressed with Daniel’s intelligence, Lina invites him to their camp retreat in the country. Afterward, Daniel and his fellow Neo-Nazi friends pick a fight with two African-American men, get arrested, and are bailed out of jail by Carla.
He spends the night with her but returns to the home of his ailing father. Daniel searches his Hebrew school notebooks and finds a semiautomatic pistol. He is harangued by his sister Linda for his Nazi beliefs, but she also urges him to stay and have Shabbat dinner with their father. The men watch television, which is forbidden, leading them to commiserate on the incomprehensibility of Jewish law.
Guy Danielsen, a journalist writing an article on hate groups in the wake of the Oklahoma City Bombing, meets Daniel for an interview. He listens to Daniel’s antisemitic rant, then reveals that he had been in contact with Daniel’s old rabbi Stanley Nadelman and knows that Daniel is Jewish. Daniel pulls out his pistol and threatens to commit suicide if Guy publishes the truth.
Daniel goes to Lina’s fascist camp retreat, where he meets Drake, a skilled marksman, along with an explosives expert. Six of the retreat participants, including Daniel, go to a Jewish deli, where they mock the other patrons and torment the owner about Jewish dietary laws until a fight breaks out.
After this fight, Daniel and his friends are required by a court to take sensitivity training, where they listen to the experiences of Holocaust survivors. One talks about how his infant son was murdered by a Nazi. Daniel is enraged that the man did nothing to save his son, but all the survivors assert that Daniel would also have done nothing to avoid being killed, and he walks out in anger.
The Believer is a 2001 American drama film directed by Henry Bean and written by Bean and Mark Jacobson. It stars Ryan Gosling as Daniel Balint, a Jew who becomes a Neo-Nazi. The film is loosely based on the true story of Dan Burros, a member of the American Nazi Party and the New York branch of the United Klans of America. He committed suicide after being revealed as Jewish by a New York Times reporter. It won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and the Golden St. George at the 23rd Moscow International Film Festival.
The Believer (2002)
Directed by: Henry Bean
Starring: Ryan Gosling, Summer Phoenix, Peter Meadows, Kris Eivers, Joel Marsh Garland, Theresa Russell, Sig Libowitz, James McCaffrey, Heather Goldenhersh, Ronald Guttman
Screenplay by: Henry Bean
Production Design by: Susan Block
Cinematography by: Jim Denault
Film Editing by: Mayin Lo, Lee Percy
Costume Design by: Alex Alvarez, Jennifer Newman
Set Decoration by: Carrie Stewart
Art Direction by: Lucio Seixas
Music by: Joel Diamond
MPAA Rating: R for strong violence, language and some sexual content.
Distributed by: Fireworks Pictures
Release Date: May 17, 2002
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