The Believer

At age twelve, Danny Balint (Gosling) is a precocious and restless Jewish boy who, when not avoiding the gentile hoodlums who prowl the streets of his Brooklyn neighborhood, can be found debating the stern rabbis at his yeshiva. By age twenty-two, he living an extraordinary double life: by day, he gives anti-Semitic speeches, raises money for neo-fascist causes, and develops elaborate plans to bomb synagogues. By night, he studies Torah, wears his tallis, and teaches his girlfriend Carla Hebrew as she tempts him with a future of Sabbath prayers and religious devotion. Danny is a Jew and a Nazi at once, living an impossible -- and unsustainable -- contradiction.