L'idiot !

Durak is a gem of a movie. It showcases a rare combination of suspense and philosophical questioning, rendering it a very entertaining film that leaves you thinking about it way past the end credits.

The characters in Durak are well developed, even those that do not get a lot of screen time. We get to know them, see how they live, understand their priorities and their motives. Deeper than that though, where the movie really excels is in exposing the nature and mighty power of the highly entangled system of corruption and how each individual character is both its co-creator and its puppet.

In a city with a corrupt council, a 9-floor high building block is about to collapse. It needs to be urgently evacuated. The corrupt city officials face the prospect of criminal proceedings against them if hundreds of tenants die under the rubles. Will they be able to rise above the profitable network of kickbacks and favors that they have been milking for a long time? Or have they been diving too deep into the sweet scum of corruption to get into the surface on time to actually do something useful for their poor citizens?

What about the poor citizens themselves? Living for decades in a dilapidated building under miserable circumstances, one would guess that change is what they desperately need. But 30 years is a long time. It is time enough for people to get used to the situation, to get to know to hate it, but also to cling to it at the same time as the only tangible piece of reality that still belongs to them. Reality in the form of a derelict pile of bricks that nevertheless stands as a barrier between their life on the one hand and death lurking in the snowy streets on the other. A pile of bricks where corruption also thrives, with a thread made of vodka and violence menacing the residents but also structuring the network of reality around them. Will they be willing to forgo everything and start anew or are they also too entangled to a mighty system of their own, unable to leave it behind even in the prospect of imminent death?

The force that poses these questions and stirs things up is the protagonist, Durak. He sees reality as it is and is determined to do something about it. He has no other choice, letting things be and following the song of the Sirenes of corruption is just not like him. He is the Socratean fly that sends ripples through the system, that forces the system to face its own stink and atrocity. What does that make him? The Hero or the Fool?

Do not be mistaken and take a comfortable distance from this movie, classifying it as an interesting depiction of corruption in Russia. This is not about Russia, this movie is about you. In whatever place you might live, it's you that is also noticing the web of corruption around you and the injustice, the desperation and the misery that it causes. It's you that decides to silently take part in it, in little or greater measure, or at least let it be and try to make a living somehow. It's you that keeps thinking from time to time that someone needs to do something about it all, that you need to take action to help people, to help yourself. But what would that make you? The Hero or Durak, the Fool?

In the wake of the tragic Rana Plaza accident ten years ago, where hundreds lost their lives due to the authorities' negligence, a surprising film has emerged from Russia that tells a similar story. "Durak" in Russian and "The Fool" in English, is a hyperrealistic depiction of disenfranchised people living in squalid buildings. Plumber Nikitin discovers a crack in a water pipe leak in a building where 820 people reside, and realizes that the building could collapse at any moment. He rushes to alert the city's administrative officials, who are drunk and dancing at a party. With great difficulty, he convinces them of the impending danger, but soon realizes the complexity of the situation. Where will 820 people be moved, and how will the allocation of 120 million rubles for building renovation be spent? Corruption runs deep in every vein of the city, and saving the lives of 820 people would mean exposing the truth and risking jail time.

The film offers nerve-wracking dialogues and incredible portrayals of characters. The music and acting were top-notch, and the story's complexity kept the tension in check. The connection to the Rana Plaza incident was uncanny, but even without that bias, "Durak" is a classic. It highlights the struggles of disenfranchised people and the corruption that runs deep in our society. Watching this movie reminded me of Himu, another 'fool' who fought for his life during the Rana Plaza incident and took part in the rescue operation like a madman. Unable to recover from the trauma of the incident, he eventually committed suicide by setting himself on fire out of anger and resentment towards the system. "Durak" leaves a powerful message that we need more idiots like Nikitin to fight the corrupt system and create a better world.

This movie could be a documentary on Russian society, it's hopes and fears, it's ideology, the eternal conflict between people and government officials, the dark and hopeless landscape of human minds where one can still choose to be human.

As a Russian myself, having lived in my homeland for 34 years already, I can say that there's nothing that will tell you more about Russians than this movie. It is not a heroic WW2 nonsense, not a dumb czar era pictures, but modern life as it is. The things you will see in the film are definitely depressing and hopeless, showing the state of decay in society «God created this kind of life and he made us live it.».

Yuri Bykov's "Durak" ("The Fool" in English) looks as the current state of affairs in Russia. This story of a plumber facing an intractable bureaucracy when he tries to draw people's attention to a precarious apartment building is merely one look into an oligarchic society that's seen little infrastructural and political advancement since the Soviet collapse. Indeed, the city government seems as hopeless as the private citizens. The truth is, none of this should come as a surprise. Boris Yeltsin turned Russia into a kleptocracy. Vladimir Putin stabilized the economy but restored the Soviet-era authoritarianism. Corruption has dominated the country ever since the USSR collapsed (and was certainly widespread in Soviet times).

"The Fool" is mostly an indictment of Putin's Russia, but can be seen as an indictment of any society in which corruption is so ingrained that the citizens practically accept it. Worth seeing.

The 2 questions I came away with after watching this extraordinary movie were, does this kind of thing really happen in Russia, and is this really what Russia is like? I contacted my only Russian acquaintance about this, and he said the movie is an accurate, though exaggerated, depiction of small-town Russia. I was curious about his comment about the movie taking place in a small town; Russians live in massive apartment buildings in small towns? In fact not a whole lot about this film is small-townish, at least to this Canadian outsider. It feels like an urban nightmare, mostly taking place in or around this huge apartment building teeming with people, at a restaurant that's teeming with people as well - because the local government is throwing a big party for themselves - or along built-up streets. The most glaring indication that the setting is indeed a small town is when the government heads all get together in a small room to discuss an emergency situation, and we are introduced to an unsavoury ragtag assortment of drunken schemers who happen to have absolute control over the local population. There is nothing urbane about these people. It's made clear in The Fool, however, that this fiefdom's vulgarity is partly the result of trickle-down vulgarity from the federal level, and there's an underlying despondency among some of the local government officials as they seemingly have no other choice but to be corrupt. So you do get glimpses of decency and humanity within the fiefdom. But how can decency and humanity win amidst the corrupt, cutthroat, dog-eat-dog reality in modern Russia from the top down to the bottom. The Fool is a tale of a flower that attempts to grow in sewage, and what happens to it, and it is the tale of how people as individuals are affected when evil reigns. Some become evil themselves, some try to resist evil entirely, most take the middle road. Beyond that, The Fool is a story about people just trying to do the best they can for themselves and their families, and be happy despite overwhelming odds, and despite hopelessness all around them.