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(who once shared the stage with Britney Spears), as a Jew who becomes an anti-Semite. Ryan Gosling plays Danny Balint, loosely based on the real-life Daniel Burros, a Jewish teen from Queens so confused and filled with self-loathing he joined the American Nazi Party and the KKK. In 1965 he was arrested after causing a disturbance at a KKK rally in New York City, and then killed himself when the
New York Times
disclosed that he was Jewish.
    The contentious subject of
The Believer
kept it off multiplex screens despite winning the Grand Jury Prize at the 2001 Sundance Film Festival and critical raves for its star Gosling. At the Toronto International Film Festival distributors were heard commenting that it is a great film, but they couldn't — or wouldn't — touch it with a 10-foot pole. Gosling's performance was compared to Ed Norton's turn as a neo-Nazi in
American History X
, but there was a difference — Norton's character seeks redemption, Gosling's doesn't. His Danny Balint constantly questions the roots of his faith, even as he faces death. This ambiguity led Rabbi Abraham Cooper of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to publicly condemn the film.
    The overriding problem with the movie is also one of its great strengths. Screenwriter Henry Bean (
Internal Affairs
,
Enemy of the State
) has nailed the language of hate practiced by skinhead groups almost too well.
The Believers
could be seen as a how-to handbook for anti-Semites, an idiot's guide to neo-Nazism. The character of Danny is articulate and charismatic, and if seen through the wrong eyes, a poster boy for hate. By casting Gosling, an appealing, talented young actor, Bean may have inadvertently made hate sexy.
    The wrong-headed anti-Semitism in
The Believer
skims the surface of Danny's character, whereas the difference between what he says and what he believes lies at the core. As a child we see an impassioned Danny arguing with his teachers about the story of Abraham, who was asked by God to kill his son Isaac as a test of faith. In the end Danny decides God is a power-drunk madman, and Isaac will be “traumatized, a putz the rest of his life.” It's the first step in his tormented relationship with his faith. “Let him crush me like the conceited bully that he is. Go ahead,” he dares.
    As a teenager he attacks Jews on the street and subway, beating one person to a bloody pulp. His rage and hatred are born from the misguided belief that the Jews did not fight back during the Holocaust, and therefore are a weak race. Eventually his journey leads him into the welcoming arms of Lina Moebius (Theresa Russell) and Curtis Zampf (Billy Zane), leaders of a Fascist organization who see Danny as a natural leader to take their message to the mainstream.
    Lina's daughter, Carla (Summer Phoenix), is drawn to Danny, attracted by his sexuality and his intellect. After Danny and a group of skinheads vandalize a synagogue and destroy the Torah, he steals and repairs the document. With Lina he explores both sides of his ideological fence, preaching hate by day while secretly studying the Torah by night. At the film's climax a final act of skinhead terrorism in a synagogue leaves Danny with a choice between life and death.
    â€œThe thing I thought was beautiful, an interesting idea, is the line in the movie when Danny says to Carla, ‘Do you think people ever commit suicide out of happiness?'” says Gosling. “That was really important to me because I felt at the end of the movie — and this is the disturbing part — that Danny was happy. Probably never would be as happy as he was at that moment in his life because he was a Jewish Nazi. He was both. He had a girlfriend who was a Nazi, who was reading the Torah and learning Hebrew, who was making Yom Kippur dinner for him and going to shul [school], and he is daven [a prayer leader] at a Yom Kippur service on a bimah [altar where the Torah is read] in which he has placed a bomb. He's got