By Arun Kumar
Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews
Featured in IMDb Critic Reviews
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| The Fool (2014) - By Yuriy Bykov |
Many of the contemporary film-makers
around the world, making independent features on class-based conflicts &
corruption withhold a common narrative thread: a central character gets
punished for doing the ‘right’ thing. We are repeatedly seeing films
that reflect the reality of our own societies, where the greedy and vilely
corrupted creatures are awarded, while the righteous deeds are spit at. In such
a corrupted-to-the-bone system, there can’t be any godly messiahs, let alone
the good men. And, when people start putting up with a cancerous system they
would only decry at the antidotes. Since ‘rules are not for rulers’, we
are all just a bunch of nobodies; a statistical number only used by politicians
to get their ‘cutbacks’. Russian film-maker Yuri Bykov’s
righteous-fury-inciting third feature-film “The Fool” (aka ‘Durak’,
2014) speaks on the danger of possessing positive virtues in a cynical society.
The young Russian in the film called Dima Nikitin (Artyom Bystrov), a plumber
working at the lower position in Public Utilities Sector, is an antidote to his
society’s ‘thought-cancer’. He thinks that working hard, having a good
education, playing by the rules, and doing the right thing would take him up
the societal ladder, which is actually infested with filthy rats and poisonous
snakes. He believes that ‘no good deed goes unrewarded’. “Oh, you
fool! You idiot!” seems to say the film’s narrative trajectory, silently
changing the statement to, ‘no good deed goes unpunished’.
“The Fool”
opens with a static shot of the cramped corridor of a rundown apartment. A
tattooed, shirtless, bulky guy walks into the frame and argues with his poor
wife about the money he has stashed (for drinking) that’s now missing. The
scene escalates to the guy brutally beating his wife and daughter, which comes
to an end with the bursting of a water pipe. Back at home, Dima, the idealist, has
an intense conversation with his mother. Father, Dima’s wife, and Dima's little
son Anton are the dinner-table spectators. She worries about her son’s honesty,
which was what caused her husband – Dima’s father – to bemoan at the prospect
of taking bribes. Although she talks in a furious tone, her worry seems
rational, since their family of hard-workers had to scrape for money to fix the
leaky pipes, while the ‘normal’ neighbors steal pipes from the
warehouse. She fears that her son’s honesty would eventual lead to his
destruction. Unable to take her rants, Dima and his father scoot away from the
dinner table. Soon, Dima gets a call to look into the pipe bursts in the
rundown communal house complex. The chief engineer is on a bender and so Dima
must attend to the call.
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| The big, crumbling communal housing complex in 'The Fool' that stands as obvious symbol for the ruined societal values |
Dima examines the pipe bursts and
gradually realizes that this huge apartment block with at least 800 residents
is going to collapse sometime in the near future. He thinks about talking about
this problem, the next day, to his superior Fedotov (Boris Nevzorov), an grumpy
old man who has amassed all the money allocated for building repairs. Dima goes
back to his house and wakes up in the middle of the night, switches on his
computer to look at some calculations. It is close to 2 am and Dima decides to
meet some one higher up in the system to state the fact that the building is
going to collapse within 24 hours. Since he is studying construction college
course, he strictly believes in those calculations. Through his mother’s
contact at mayor office, Dima decides to visit the town’s mayor Nina Galaganova
aka ‘mama’ (Natalya Surkova), who is at a lavish party, celebrating her
50th birthday. She and her rich department heads are engulfed by
booze when Dima pushes through his grim findings. She stumbles from the flashy dance floor and
calls up for an urgent cabinet meeting. Nina looks disturbed by what Dima is
saying. She really seems dedicated to save the 800 plus residents, even though
she wonders how those residents will be resettled, considering the town’s lack
of housing facilities. First, she sends out Fedotov with Dima to analyze the
situation. When Fedotov confirms the bad news, a wave of mutual recrimination
starts on who’s responsible for this fiasco. Nevertheless, the question is
“Will they save these poor, lost people (by ‘lost’ I mean the
drug-addicted, violent individuals)?” And more acidic is the next question
director Bykov poses to us “Are these poor, lost people even worth the
trouble”?
Director Yuri Bykov’s subject matter in
“The Fool” would make viewers draw comparisons with fellow Russian
film-maker Andrey Zvyagintsev’s examination of oligarchy in his last two films
– “Elena” and “Leviathan”. However, I don’t think it’s not a
right kind of comparison. While Zvyagintsev gives ample space to his viewers to
profoundly interpret on the chosen subject matter, Bykov’s style is more
didactic and his metaphors are a bit on-the-nose. The unbridled tone of
righteous anger we find in Bykov’s film reminds us of the works of the late
Alexei Balabanov (another highly original Russian film-maker). Bykov’s visual
and narrative style is bent on making the audiences to fully get the issues he
is talking about. “The Fool” is a call to action to Russian people or to
any societies with rotten social values. The didacticism isn’t diffused in
large doses as there are little spaces to reflect on the profundity of each
scenario. If we can take in some melodrama and the intentionally drab color
palettes, we could savor many crisp observations.
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| An unforgettable moment from the film's last scene as Dima pursues for a moral solution |
It is obvious that the huge crack that
runs from the ground floor to ninth floor in the buildings is a metaphor for
unstable Russian state. The residents of the nine floor building serve as the
microcosm for the nation’s increasing lower class people. The residents comprised
of drug-abusing teens, violent, alcoholic men, ignored pensioners, and silent
hard-working wives are trapped in their places, thanks to the crumbling
state-nation. The whole films unfurls in three spaces: the dingy council houses where the people live a shoddy
life; compared to that Dima’s own small apartment seems warm; and then Dima’s
quest takes him to a sparse, glitzy buildings, where ultimate degeneracy
thrives. Dima faces barrier on both sides of the polarized society, shutting
their ears to his holy truths. Dima faces barriers even within his house as the
mother (a retired doctor) calls him a fool for harboring noble ideals. Our
movie experience becomes increasingly maddening as these barriers stubbornly
stay up, despite a lot of haranguing tactics of Dima. Perhaps, the biggest
strength of “The Fool” is the adept characterization. There are no easy
categorizations like mirthful, sympathetic ‘poor’ and monstrous ‘rich’.
Director Bykov’s doesn’t construct his narrative as an unceasing conflict between
the rich and the poor. The narrative rather indicts the government policies
that make us all live like the animals. In this nonredeemable corrupted system,
everyone below blames the person above and vice-versa. In this never-ending
cycle of accusations, what’s glossed over are the deaths of innocent and
suffocation of truth. Bykov’s characters, especially that of Mayor Nina and
Dima’s wife, comments on our increasing inability to act with moral
clarity.
Director Bykov forges immediate
connection with the viewers through Dima Nikitin. Although the people around
him (except for the well-meaning father) repeatedly use the term ‘fool’,
we believe in him to right the wrongs. We feel that he is making the right
choices and as we gradually walk through the degenerate spaces alongside our
protagonist, we too get embroiled with cynicism, wondering whether Dima is
making the ‘right’ choices. Not only we ask ourselves, ‘if this guy
is sure about the fate of the building?’ we slowly start to think that ‘he
is a fool for pursuing like that’. The well-crafted scenarios constantly kick
upon our senses to totally forget the prospect of redemption and pray to not
fall further into the stinking abyss. By the ending, we are most interested in
Dima’s survival than hoping to see him do what his conscience demands. While
there are many on-the-face messages spread over the narrative, this is where
Bykov shows apt amount of subtlety. He seems to be asking the significant
question many morality tales fail to address: “Will one’s strong sense of
morality eventually provide a moral solution?” It’s also where the inherent
Russianness of the film transcends to be something universal experience (we all
have propensity for little moral compromises). The performances elevate the
hardened realism of the situation. I immensely liked the performance of Surkova
as the maternal mayor, who flawlessly uses modulations to convey the shifts
between a bureaucrat’s mellifluous, vulnerable, as well as perilous imposing
nature. Sokurov’s sorrowful monologue about corruption only makes her villainy
all the more powerful. Actor Bystrov makes us care for Dima till the last
without ever heavy-handedly conveying the character’s morality.
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| Dima Nikitin sits at the centre among affluent men, scheming together to save their names from the upcoming apartment fiasco |
“The Fool” aka
“Durak” (116 minutes) is a strong conversation piece on the nature of a
corrupted society that promotes casual lack of human empathy. The film’s themes
would transcend language and country barriers to think about the depravity
seeping in our very own society. A country
needs a rude awakening when its citizens address their most compassionate as
‘The Fool’.
Rating: 7.5/10
About Author -
Arun Kumar is an ardent cinephile, who finds solace by exploring and learning from the unique works of the cinematic art. He believes in the shared-dream experience of cinema and tries to share those thoughts in the best possible way. He blogs at Passion for Movies and 'Creofire'.
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