The film tells the story of Russian plumber, Dima Nikitin (Bystrov), who suddenly decides to face the corrupt system of local politics in order to save the lives of 800 inhabitants of an old dormitory, which is about to collapse.
"The Fool" wraps its Hobbesian vision of squalor around a fable worthy of Frank Capra, but twisted to suggest a cruel inversion of Capra's inspirational allegories of humble Everymen crusading for justice and democratic ideals.
He may be saddled with an overly ironic title role, but Bystrov is terrific. His cowboy squint and dogged intelligence are enough to give you hope for Russia, although the movie certainly won't.
Frank Capra would have approved of The Fool, a forceful Russian drama in which a lone plumber stands up to a corrupt system on behalf of the people living in a squalid apartment building.
The Fool (Durak) feels like a realist counterpart to Andrei Zvyagintsev's Leviathan, more accessible as mainstream drama, and more pragmatically critical of a tainted system.
The dialogue is broadly generalized, urgently on point, and bracing in its undisguised diagnostic fury. If you can accept its unabashed didacticism, The Fool plays crisply.
