The Fool

It's rather astonishing that the Russian Ministry of Culture has subsidized films that are quite critical of government corruption and social desperation in the Putin era, including Yury Bykov's gritty drama The Fool, centering on Dima (Artzom Bystrov), a simple plumber who tries to enable the evacuation of residents from a dilapidated apartment building that is on the verge of collapse. City officials—led by the mayor (Natalya Surkova)—debate how to deal with the crisis, while pocketing funds that might have been used to upgrade the structure. There's a modified Frank Capra feel to the set-up, in which the powerful contemptuously (and heavy-handedly) dismiss the ordinary folk they exploit, but the building residents don't escape criticism either, portrayed here for the most part as violent, alcoholic thugs. And even Dima's mother berates him for bucking the corrupt system instead of taking a cut. But things do not go in a Capra-esque direction, and Dima comes across as a modern version of Prince Myshkin, the saintly figure at the center of Dostoevsky's The Idiot—a good man destroyed by the endemic evil of the society surrounding him. Another solid dark tale of the realities of life in post-Soviet Russia, this is recommended. (F. Swietek)