Spiritual Review: The Believer, a drama on DVD

he has no right to judge them because he has no way of knowing what he would do in a similar impossible situation.

Of course, at the end of the movie, Daniel is in his own impossible situation. He can save his life and live the rest of it as a criminal in jail or he can sacrifice his life for a higher purpose.   Daniel deliberately and bravely chooses self-sacrifice. Like Jesus, the enlightened Jew, Daniel sacrifices self for the love of others and for the love of God.  After Daniel’s death, we meet him one more time.  He’s back in his Hebrew school, running up one flight of stairs after another, endlessly searching for something:  God, meaning, glory, enlightenment.  But there’s nothing there, nothing except endless searching.  Daniel is learning what we all must learn.  Self-sacrifice is meaningless.  Death is empty. God is not there.  And the example of enlightenment taught by Jesus needs to be reinterpreted without the notion of sacrifice. 

Direction 
The teenaged Daniel does not give a convincing or credible performance.  Luckily, there are only a handful of scenes with him, and what we remember is the disturbing, multi-dimensional performance delivered by Ryan Gosling.  Also, sometimes The Believer plot feels over the top and contrived.  That said, The Believer is extraordinary because it makes you think about whether the ideas we learn about God, the same ones that have been passed down generation after generation for two millenniums, are worth keeping. 

DVD Title:  The Believer
Co-written and Directed By:  Henry Bean
Distributor:  Palm Pictures
Starring:  Ryan Gosling, Theresa

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