Essay
The powerless protagonist - A reflection on the powerlessness of the individual in modern Russian society through the film “Durak” (The Fool)

INTRODUCTION
“You must obey the law, always, not only when they grab you by your special place.”

Vladimir Putin
I grew up on American movies built around stories portraying an underdog protagonist (ex. Erin Brockovich) who against all odds through hardship and danger manages to beat all sources of antagonism, fight injustice, save the day, and ride off into the sunset with cash and a high sense of self-achievement, reaching a full transformation circle in his/her character development.
In contrast, after watching “The Fool” by Yuri Bykov, and “Leviathan” by Andrey
Zvyagintsev I couldn't help but noticing the exact opposite. Namely, the stories revolve around an underdog protagonist, who in a toxically decaying environment, never seem to change or learn anything while battling against either corruption, injustice or both, ending up with the protagonist being ruined in every way imaginable, losing practically everything including his family and hope, his efforts ridiculed, and he himself severely physically punished.
The two protagonists are of course very different, however, one needs to be reminded that behind every movie script there is an individual writer with a goal of conveying a statement to his audience. In the film “the Fool” through Dima, the powerless protagonist, the writer/director describes a society that is deeply in decay, where people are treating each other like swine, a place where love means nothing without financial security, where the immediate family is a source of great pain caused by physical or mental torture (or both). A place where friendship only exist through a common foundation of values based on moral corruption. The statement is seemingly straightforward: In today’s Russia, the individual is powerless, people are indifferent about each other, and Russian society is collapsing.
Is there any truth to this? Can the film “Durak” really be used to provide an objective reflection of modern Russian society or is it just the subjective interpretation of reality created by the writer/director himself?
What about earlier films in the same Chernukha genre? Given what we now know about the economical, social and geopolitical history of Russia/Soviet union, did older Chernukha films provide a reliable description of the individual in Russian society? The Chernukha film genre
The film “Durak” (The Fool) by Yuri Bykov belongs to a typically Russian genre called
“Chernukha” derived from the Russian word Черный (Cherni) meaning “black” emphasising the darkest aspects of human life.
Historically, this definition was used to describe a certain type of drama and prose found in Lyudmila Petrushevskaya’s literature, but later most commonly referred to when describing a certain cinematic style portraying dirty and crowded apartments, urban isolation, death, drugs, alcoholism, fatherlessness, despair, hopelessness, domestic violence, cruelty, rape and all other traumatic and tragic circumstances that fits into the very epicentre of human suffering. (Graham, 2000: 9).

Chernukha’s history and impact on Russian art cinema
This particular genre surfaced during the perestroika years of the now dead Soviet
Union. (1987-1990). A famous film critic commented: “the screen has been taken over in form and content by a nightmare of communal squalor, curses of history, cruel and joyless sex, food line brutality and the metallic scrape of barracks and prisons.” (Graham, 2000: 9). The Chernukha film was described as a “black wave” of contagion that had spread to all aspects of film making and that this wave was infecting the film audiences. The genre was so strong that it threatened Russian film art with its dominance, especially by conveying negative interpretation of the present and rejection of the future. (Graham, 2000: 10).
One such film was “Oh, you geese” (1991) Where the director explores the degradation of a Russian family, a portrayal that turns into a metaphor for life in
Russia at large. (Beumers, 2009, p. 211).
The question of what was considered too much that could be portrayed in films, and what symbols or ideals should remain untouchable and thus protected by the state became a theme for debate. Experts wondered what the purpose of this new phenomenon called Chernukha really was? Was it to expose the rotten core of
Soviet society with its facade of false ideas and values or, as Seth Graham put it, “a mere bad boy episode?”. Either way, the Chernukha called attention to undeniable problems in society like corruption and moral decay, a necessary encounter with ugliness that would people pay attention to one undeniable aspect of social reality, perhaps helping to bring about a force to change for the better. (Graham, 2000: 11).
An important psychological explanation for the Chernukha flood was that it was said to be an over-compensation for decades of official concealment of the major problems individuals were facing in Soviet society. (Graham, 2000: 12).
People feared that this flood of the negative could potentially lead to the irrevocable loss of the positive, thus the “Nihilist” snowball effect or the Chernukha would crush peoples hope and meaning. (Graham, 2000: 12). In 1991, the Soviet Union disintegrated. The state was no longer able to keep its people in a status quo.
Without a state controlling the present and thus providing a bleak future, there was no longer a need to reject the future. Chernukha became less attractive and almost disappeared, only to reemerge years later in crime series and movies like Leviathan and The Fool.

The film “Durak” (The Fool) 2015
Production company: Rock Films
Cast: Artem Bystrov, Nataliya Surkova, Boris Nevzorov, Kirill Polukhin, Daryl Moroz,
Yury Tsurilo, Irina Nizina, Alexander Korshunov, Maxim Pinker
Writer-Director-Editor-Composer: Yury Bykov
116 minutes
The opening scene starts with a shot of a kitchen in decay where a woman is preparing food, her drug addict husband walks in demanding money, physical conflict ensues followed by a brutal beating of the woman and daughter. A hot water pipe suddenly bursts scolding the husband. As he screams and continues to scream in agony, a panoramic shot of a depressingly grey city and the old soviet block buildings gives the viewer a sense of the environment. The camera ends up displaying a nine storey building. In this shot the director introduces the audience to the central object (building) of the story and provide a glimpse into some of the interpersonal relationships characterising the people living in that building.
Next scene introduces the protagonist Dima preparing for an exam in constructional building statistics. His wife and young son sitting on a sofa in a run down two bedroom apartment. He wants to be an engineer, but he also works part time as a municipal plumber. Through dialogue and by observing his physical reactions to events, we learn that Dima, even though both he and his family seem to be living just above the poverty line, refuses to conform to the seemingly acceptable collective standards of a dog eat dog society where you have to steal, pay bribes to pass exams and be utterly inconsiderate of others in order to have a decent life.
In a scene at the dinner table, we learn about the Dima’s family dynamics, where
Dima’s frustrated mother starts nagging on Dima’s wife for being a bad mother, only to continue with Dima’s father, verbally assaulting and blaming him for their poor and hopeless life conditions, exposing the correlation between honesty and despair, corruption and success. Next in line is Dima, who she tries to get to borrow money from a drunkard who will die soon anyway, thus allowing Dima to earn some “easy” money by completely disregarding his own value system. She basically pushes him to join the collective and be like everyone else. She even uses Dima’s little son as a tool of manipulation in order to get Dima to conform, saying: “What about your sons future?”. Dima refuses to listen and leaves the table.
The inciting incident happens when Dima is suddenly called to the nine storey building to fix the broken hot water pipe. Dima notices a suspicious crack in the wall and as he checks the outside wall, he realises that the entire building is about to fall.
When he tells the other members of the municipal crew, they explain that for several decades all the tax money delegated for the repair of this 40 year old Soviet building has been stolen by the chief of the municipal crew. Dima is appalled by what he hears, but since he is not the man in charge he lets it go, only to wake up in the middle of the night to check the statistics of the building. We learn that the building is leaning at angle of 11 degrees and that the maximum is five degrees. His conscience doesn't allow him peace of mind, his deeply ingrained moral values doesn't allow him to let 820 people die and he decides to warn them. Dima quickly dresses waking everybody in the apartment, using his mothers connections to find out where he can find the mayor of the city. His mother and his wife try to talk him out of it, saying he is
“a fool” that this is not his problem, that nobody is going to listen anyway, and that he will get himself and them into trouble. He refuses to listen and leaves to find the mayor. The mayor is found at the local hotel where drunk officials and their spouses are celebrating the mayors 50th birthday. It is here that we learn about the mayor and the people surrounding her. We learn that the mayor “Nina” comes from a poor family owning one cow in the village, that she later turned secretary in the municipality, before achieving the dream of becoming mayor of a city. (a wet dream of Soviet socialist realism fairytale and frequent theme in films during Stalins purges of 1930-1953) P 81
We also learn that Nina has achieved this through the help of a tall, bald man with a moustache who during most of the film sits in a corner behind her in silence.
Against all odds, Dima manages to get the mayors attention telling her that the building will come down within 24 hours. This is a great tool in the art of storytelling, because the audience now have to deal with a sense of urgency, thus raising the stakes, building suspense.
Havoc ensues as everybody’s afraid of the consequences of the building collapsing, not because of the 820 people who would die in the process, but rather because this would lead to bad press and investigations where they might personally become responsible and exposed for years of fraud and stealing of municipal and city funds required from the state for the benefit of its citizens and their well being.
Dima, the maintenance chief of the municipality and the chief of the fire brigade are sent to investigate whether there is any truth behind Dima’s claims. This is also the midpoint of the story.
After inspecting the building, maintenance chief of the municipality and the chief of the fire brigade are convinced that Dima is right.
The mayor orders an evacuation. The question is only where to relocate all these people consisting mainly of people as shown in the opening scene of the movie.
This is where the troubles really begin. The city budget is already minus 120 million
Rubles and the resettlement would cost 260 million Rubles. The mayor tries visits a private real estate guy and asks him to help by letting her resettle the 820 people into whole blocks of newly built apartments that stand empty. He refuses, telling her that the people who have invested in this are the same people that he has seen murdering people in the 90’s. As the real estate guy is talking, he is nervously looking past Nina avoiding the eyes of the man standing behind her, namely the tall bald man with a moustache. Nina curses the real estate guy as he turns his back and walks away. She is furious and wants to take action. In a sudden reverse of dynamics in the scene and the film, the bald man suddenly says (to the mayor) “shut up you fucking whore, who do you think you are? You are nothing and I am something. I made you who you are today and now you are biting the hand that is feeding you! Are you with them or with us?” We now learn that the real power is not with the officials, but rather the people in the shadows who made the officials. Nina choses sides and conforms, putting a definitive stop to the evacuations plans.

Unknowingly, Dima is waiting at the hotel for the return of the mayor, the chief of police and others are also waiting. Chief of police is telling Dima that he shouldn't be dealing with people with such experience such as the people involved, thus conveying that Dima should walk away and forget everything he has heard or seen.
It doesn't take long before the chief of police gets a phone call after which Dima, the maintenance chief of the municipality and the chief of the fire brigade get a ride in a police van in what they believe is an evacuation operation of the building.
The police van heads in the opposite direction and the three men are taken to a river where the maintenance chief of the municipality and the chief of the fire brigade are going to be murdered by the police. Before he is shot, in a sudden moment of humanism, the otherwise corrupt to the core chief of the municipality asks the cops to let Dima go. In a sudden moment of humanity, the killer cop releases Dima, but on one condition, that he leaves the city, never to come back.
Dima runs home, his mothers and wife’s premonitions are confirmed as Dima and his wife and son now have to leave their home and run. Dima’s father borrows a neighbours car and tells Dima he doesn't have to return it.
In the car, Dima’s wife questions Dima’s sense of intelligence. He asks her for forgiveness. As they pass by she points towards the nine storey building and tells
Dima all his efforts were for nothing. Dima, who is still believes there will be an evacuation and that the mayor surely will not let 820 people die, sees that the streets are empty, without any intervention taking place. He stops the car. His wife completely loses it, asking him which is more important, his own family or people who he doesn't even know? Here, Dima tells her to leave without him and then says something very profound:
“Неужели ты не понимаешь, что мы живем как свиньи и дохнем как свиньи только потому, что мы друг другу никто.”
Translated into
“Don't you realise that we are living like swine and dying like swine because we don't mean anything to each other.”
Wife leaves and Dima returns to his home where his mother slaps him in the face for his recklessness, his father cries, blaming himself for raising his son to be an honest man and a “fool”. He asks Dima what he is going to do? Dima says he can’t just let all those people die. Dima runs over to the building and knocks on every door getting all the people out before the crack of dawn. In the morning, the building is still standing and the people are irritated with Dima’s heroics. Last scene is Dima being beaten severely by the people he risked his whole existence in trying to save. Last shot is Dima lying alone on the ground and we can only ask ourselves whether or not he really was a fool after all?

Corruption in Russia
In 2015 during Putin’s second term as president, Russia fell from 90th place to126th on the worlds list of most corrupt countries. Corruption is found in law enforcement agencies, healthcare, education, housing and communal services, social security services and in the acquisition of government contracts and purchases, land distribution and construction. (Wikipedia)

Reception of the film “Durak” (The Fool)
“The Fool” was well accepted by both international and domestic audiences, winning many awards such as the Best Screenplay, Open Russian Film Festival (Russia),
2014. Best Screenplay in Fiction Section, Tenemos Que Ver - International Film
Festival on Human Rights of Uruguay, 2014
Perhaps its success and impact on its audience can best be explained by a comment made by Lyudmila Bydiak when she detected a similar public sentiment in the 90’s, suggestively connecting it to a similar impatience with the tempo of sociopolitical reforms of those days. “It seems to most observers that like the Soviet government, the cinema is tardy, failing to respond to society’s psychological mood, which is opposed not to the problematics confronting the cinema, but to that which leads society to an impasse”. (Graham, 2000: 12).

Conclusion
In an interview about the film, Yuri Bykov was quoted saying: “As artists we should focus on speaking through our work about mankind and its problems, about our different beliefs and how to reach an understanding, that would solve the problems that those beliefs create among people.”
Through this quote, and by watching the way the film was played out, I came to the conclusion that the Yuri Bykov’s underlying desire was to emotionally agitate the audience and somehow get them to become aware of their own participation in the collapse of the building, which most probably is a metaphor for the Russian society as a whole.
By setting a Jesus like underdog protagonist in a decaying society trying to rescue a collapsing building within 24 hours, Yuri Bykov successfully managed to manipulate the viewer into emotionally identifying with the protagonist. In other words, we want the protagonist to succeed in his endeavour, just like we want a boxer of our choosing to win over an opponent we are not familiar with, or that have been portrayed to us as an antagonist (Rocky IV). In “Durak” (The Fool) we are cheering for Dima who ends up selflessly sacrificing himself in order to protect people who he doesn't even know, and even though his actions are admirable, he ultimately remains a powerless protagonist who in the end unjustly experiences total demise.
In what ways does this affect the viewer? What happens to an individual who is constantly exposed to a powerless protagonist and thus reminded of his powerlessness and inability to effect his chances of having a better future?
Can the film “Durak” really be used to provide an objective reflection of modern
Russian society or is it just the subjective interpretation of reality created by the writer/director himself?
The answer to this is yet to be seen, but if history repeats itself as during the 1990’s when the Chernukha films started calling for the attention to undeniable problems in
Soviet society like corruption and moral decay - society soon collapsed. Of course this was due to many factors both internal and external, but still, the Chernukha seemed to have reflected the psychological mood of the audience of the time.
Another angle regarding the film “Durak” (The Fool) is that the views and opinions conveyed thought the film are often times based on the writers subjective perceptions reflecting the thoughts and experiences of the writer, either through observational learning or through direct contact or interaction with some type of stimuli that emotionally motivated the writer to write the script in the first place.

Bibliography
Beumes, Birgit (2009) A History of Russian Cinema. Berg Publisher: English ed.
Seth Graham (2000). Chernukha and Russian Film (P.10)

Internet sources https://www.festivalscope.com/director/bykov-yury http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/v/ vladimir_putin_3.html#QsakUUBlO4WsOdBP.99 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rapZjHYe-vA