Inside a skinhead
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Inside a skinhead |
| Original title | The Believer |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 2001 |
| length | 99 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 18 |
| Rod | |
| Director | Henry Bean |
| script | Henry Bean |
| production | Susan Hoffman, Christopher Roberts |
| camera | Jim Denault |
| cut | Mayin Lo , Lee Percy |
| occupation | |
| |
Inside a Skinhead (Original title: The Believer ) is an American film directed by Henry Bean. It is based on the story of Daniel Burros , a Jew who was a member of the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s . However, the story has been carried over to the present.
action
Danny Balint is an American Jew who was sent to a Jewish religious school ( yeshiva ) by his parents as a boy . After long discussions with his teacher, he breaks with the Jewish religion . He is particularly repulsed by the story of Abraham about to sacrifice his own son. As an adult, he has become a neo-Nazi skinhead whose hatred is primarily directed at Jews. At a meeting of several neo-Nazis in New York, he met the National Socialist intellectuals Curtis Zampf and Lina Moebius, who were impressed by his intelligence, but dismissed his anti-Semitism as a weakness. Nevertheless, they invite him and his friends to a neo-Nazi camp in the forest. He also begins an affair with Carla Moebius, Lina's daughter. Shortly before the start of the camp, he is contacted by Guy Danielsen, a journalist who works for the New York Times , among others . He has credible statements that would expose him as a Jew. Danny denies everything and threatens the journalist with a gun. Among other things, he says he would kill himself if Guy published the article.
In the camp he is trained on the weapon and befriends an explosives expert. The group, which consists mainly of brawny neo-Nazis, is conspicuous in a kosher restaurant and sentenced to community hours; in a history seminar she is confronted with Holocaust survivors. Although the group makes fun of the elderly and spreads annihilation fantasies, Danny is very moved by a father's report. He had to watch as German soldiers murdered his toddler with a bayonet. At the latest from this point on you will notice that Danny hates the Jews because of their “weakness”. Shortly thereafter, the group plans to bomb a synagogue . When the group makes fun of a Torah scroll and soils it, Danny secretly steals it and mends it again. He imagines that he was the Wehrmacht soldier who murdered the child. The bomb doesn't go off because the timer battery is too weak. With the shooter Drake, Danny is supposed to shoot the Jewish banker Ilio Manzetti. Danny misses, however, and Drake alleges that he did this on purpose. During their dispute, Drake discovers a tallit that Danny is wearing under his clothes. In panic, he shoots Drake and leaves the Illios estate.
In the meantime, he teaches Carla Hebrew and returns to his Jewish community in New York. Despite the two unsuccessful attacks, Curtis and Lina still have confidence in Danny. Due to his intelligence and his rhetorical skills, he should give speeches for a neo-Nazi organization at events and thus win new sympathizers. The first appearances are successful, until Danny starts a Jewish prayer at a gathering of American neo-Nazis and shocked the participants by declaring that the only way to destroy Jews is to truly love them. Curtis and Lina kick Danny out, but shortly afterwards Ilio Manzetti is killed and the press links Danny to the murder. Guy Danielsen reveals Danny's Jewish origins.
As a final coup he plans to detonate a bomb while praying in front of a synagogue and kill himself in the process. However, both Carla and Danny's Jewish friends are present at the prayer. Just before the bomb detonates, he sends everyone outside and stays in the center of the explosion himself. The last scene shows Daniel as a student of his old Talmud school and his old teacher. In an endless loop, Daniel runs up the stairs to the classroom, under the words of the teacher that there is nothing up there.
background
Bean was his work with film students at Queens College for The Believer inspired. He developed the starting material further and, under the impression of the book One More Victim by Arthur Gelb and AM Rosenthal, wrote the screenplay for Inside a Skinhead in 1997 and 1998 together with Mark Jakobson . One More Victim tells the life story of Daniel Burros, a Jew who was a member of the American Nazi Party and the Ku Klux Klan in the 1960s.
The first attempt to film the script under Bean's direction failed due to irreconcilable differences with the producers. Bean then founded the production company Fuller Films with Christopher Robert and made the film himself - together with Seven Arts Pictures. Filming took place in New York City and in Alpine .
After its completion and the successful premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 19, 2001, the film was not distributed. Bean and Susan Hoffmann attributed this to the influence of the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center , who was critical of the film. The television rights were finally sold in April 2001 to Showtime , a private American pay-TV broadcaster , which first aired Inside a Skinhead on March 17, 2002. The rights to the theatrical distribution eventually went to Fireworks Pictures. The US movie release was on May 17, 2002.
The cost of production was $ 1.5 million. The cinema box office in the US are on Box Office Mojo reported with 416,925 US dollars and in the countries of France, Italy, Mexico and Spain with a total of 892,391 US dollars. The film was not shown in cinemas in Germany. The DVD with German synchronization was released on June 12, 2009 by Capelight Pictures.
Reviews
Inside a Skinhead received an 82 percent positive rating from Rotten Tomatoes , based on 90 ratings. The average rating is 7.3 out of 10. The consensus is, "Gosling commands the screen to perform raw, electrifying."
BBC Film's Jamie Russell said it was an awesome but also "a belated contender for one of the best films of the year - an intellectually stunning, deeply moving film." In part, it was "prickly, vaguely funny, even 'difficult'" in best sense. "
Todd McCarthy wrote for Variety , "Bean deals with the core elements of this strange and strangely compelling situation with admirable openness and intelligence, but circling around the edges." The tenets of Zampf and Moebius' political movement are neglected and many scenes are "Ridiculous borderlines, even the masochistic impulses."
Julie Salamon for the New York Times said: "This deliberately provocative film portrait [...] offers a lot of frenzy, shamelessness and shock, but little insight into the psychopathology of the character." The most striking moment of the film comes when Danny with the Holocaust survivor is confronted and asks why they let themselves be treated so brutally. One of them, an old man, replies with the question: “What should we learn from you, Daniel? It's a good question that has never been answered. "
Peter Travers for Rolling Stone assessed: that it would be "a sensitive topic", but "Gosling offers a great, anything but daring performance that will be talked about for a long time."
OFDb.de said: “This film makes American History X look like an MTV film,” the producers advertise on the cover. And indeed, “the film shines with captivating dialogues, with an omnipotent presence of the main actor and his word. In contrast to the physical violence in American History X, the violence of the word […] creeps in here subtly. The violence scene at the beginning serves here rather to [show] the pent-up frustration and [] to symbolize the disappointment that he experienced in childhood. "
Awards
In 2001, the film won the Grand Jury Prize of the Sundance Film Festival .
Web links
- The Believer in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- The Believer atrotten tomatoes(English)
- Inside a Skinhead at Metacritic (English)
- Inside a Skinhead in the online film database
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Josh Zeman: IDENTITY CRISIS. Filmmaker Magazine, accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ AM Rosenthal and Arthur Gelb: One More Victim: The Life and Death of an American-Jewish Nazi . In: New American Library, 1967. (English)
- ↑ Inside a Skinhead (2001). Company credits. Internet Movie Database , accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ^ The Believer (2001). The New York Times , March 2, 2001, accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Why can't "The Believer" find a distributor? Entertainment Weekly , April 20, 2001, accessed May 4, 2001 .
- ↑ Rachel Abramowitz: Opinions That Count for a Lot. Los Angeles Times , April 15, 2001, accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ John Dempsey: Showtime gets 'Believer'. Variety , April 20, 2001, accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Ethan Alter: 'Believer' on Showtime: Must-must-see movie. (No longer available online.) Media Life Magazine, March 15, 2002, archived from the original on July 18, 2015 ; accessed on March 2, 2015 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Mike Goodridge: Fireworks to release The Believer after Showtime. ScreenDaily, August 22, 2001, accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ a b Inside a Skinhead (2001). Release info. Internet Movie Database , accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ a b The Believer. Box Office Mojo , accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ The Believer. Box Office Mojo , accessed March 2, 2015 .
- ↑ Film review by Rotten Tomatoes , accessed on November 18, 2018.
- ↑ Jamie Russell: Review at bbc.co, accessed November 18, 2018.
- ↑ Todd McCarthy: The Believer at variety.com, accessed November 18, 2018.
- ↑ Julie Salamon: Imagery of Anger In a Troubled Mind at nytimes.com, accessed November 18, 2018.
- ↑ Peter Travers : The Believer at rollingstone.com, accessed on November 18, 2018.
- ↑ Inside a Skinhead - The Believer (2001) , OFDb.de.
