I am importing to this blog some reviews I published earlier, elsewhere. This is the first of them. I have made some corrections and/or improvements over the original text published on January 22, 2006.
Dramaturgically speaking, it is quite possible that 'The Believer' is the worst film ever made. In fact, I find it very difficult that something will ever surpass it in terms of psychological incoherence, nonsensical plot, etc, etc. It would be boring for me to enumerate its flaws one by one as this has already been done by competent critics. The only reason why I am writing this review is to try to explain why some reviewers are so fond of it. First you have to consider that the main character of this movie, called Danny, is a very articulate man, and he is said to be loosely based on a real person who was quite the opposite of that. This was a choice of the filmmaker that may contain the key to understanding what his approach to filmmaking was in the case of this film. You see, if Danny were not articulate at all, he would not be able to deliver his provoking speeches throughout the film. I found these speeches interesting and I think they reveal the filmmaker's deep insight into the matters that he is trying to focus in the movie, but they are not subordinated to the story: the plot and the characters are simply an excuse to those verbal utterances. In short, this is a literary essay disguised as a movie. I think those critics that liked this movie were so intellectually stimulated by the ideas expressed by its main character that they failed to see the obvious flaws in the movie as a whole. As a side note, I suggest that those who are interested in the themes addressed by the movie (judaism, nazism, christianity, etc) read "Ein Deutsches Requiem", a short story by Jorge Luis Borges that is included in the book "Ficciones". It has a minimum of plot and, like some of Borges' stories, is really an essay in disguise.
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