He destroys the both the blameless and the wicked. When a scourge brings sudden death, he mocks the despair of the innocent. When a land falls into the hands of the wicked, he blindfolds its judges. If it is not He, then who is it? Job 9: 22-24
Danny Balint is Jew who hates Jews. Why? He claims that there's no reason. Like Catullus, he says, `I hate and I love. Who can tell me why?' And just as he says that it's in the very nature of things to hate Jews, at the very moment he insists that the id rules the ego, he goes ahead and tells us why. The Jews, he believes, `love to separate things.' They're wanderers, universalists without life-affirming ties to the soil. They're obsessed, he argues, with giving pleasure, an inherent weakness that ultimately deracinates civil society. Marx, Freud, and Einstein, he believes, gave us communism, infantile sexuality, and the atom bomb.
But that's not the worst of it. These are only symptoms of the disease, which boils down to this: Jewish people don't understand the true nature of their faith. Sure, they love and obey God. That's not the issue. The issue is the character (or lack thereof) of the God they believe in. Like Job, Danny thinks that the Almighty is wantonly cruel, given to unchecked paroxysms of jealous anger, and certainly not a creature of reason or justice or his well publicized love. And so Danny says that he's the only one who *does* believe in God. He's the only true believer, because he sees him for the `powerful madman that he is,' a deity who turned Abraham into a `quivering putz' by commanding him to sacrifice his own son. `And we're supposed to worship such a deity?' he asks. He hates Jews because they supposedly love this deity, this destructive madman.
This film is so deep, so layered, so rich and provocative, due in part to Ryan Gosling's amazing performance, I believe this is one of the finest films ever made. Ever.
Danny Balint is Jew who hates Jews. Why? He claims that there's no reason. Like Catullus, he says, `I hate and I love. Who can tell me why?' And just as he says that it's in the very nature of things to hate Jews, at the very moment he insists that the id rules the ego, he goes ahead and tells us why. The Jews, he believes, `love to separate things.' They're wanderers, universalists without life-affirming ties to the soil. They're obsessed, he argues, with giving pleasure, an inherent weakness that ultimately deracinates civil society. Marx, Freud, and Einstein, he believes, gave us communism, infantile sexuality, and the atom bomb.
But that's not the worst of it. These are only symptoms of the disease, which boils down to this: Jewish people don't understand the true nature of their faith. Sure, they love and obey God. That's not the issue. The issue is the character (or lack thereof) of the God they believe in. Like Job, Danny thinks that the Almighty is wantonly cruel, given to unchecked paroxysms of jealous anger, and certainly not a creature of reason or justice or his well publicized love. And so Danny says that he's the only one who *does* believe in God. He's the only true believer, because he sees him for the `powerful madman that he is,' a deity who turned Abraham into a `quivering putz' by commanding him to sacrifice his own son. `And we're supposed to worship such a deity?' he asks. He hates Jews because they supposedly love this deity, this destructive madman.
This film is so deep, so layered, so rich and provocative, due in part to Ryan Gosling's amazing performance, I believe this is one of the finest films ever made. Ever.