Surprising

What do think of Russia today? I mean Russia, the country, today – not the TV-station, which you can no longer see anyway? Is Russia a liberal country, like we in the West are, or like we at least used to be? Of course not, it is an authoritarian country of corrupt power-holders, right?

Surprisingly, Russia seems to be both – or at least it was 12 years ago. Just get to see the Russian film “The Fool” by the director and screenplay writer, Youri Bukov, made in 2013. The film is a harsh story about an unnamed town in which public agencies have descended into total corruption. If the film has the slightest connection to reality, there is corruption in Russia. However, the fact that the film was made, speaks for a liberal society. It got a prize at a film-festival in Sochi 2014 (as well as prices in the West) and was produced with financial support from the (Russian) Ministry of culture.

As we know, the combination of liberal and corrupt is possible. In fact, not seldom we react to our own revelations of corrupt circumstances by saying: “… at least it comes out in the open”. (Think of the first “gate” – The Watergate scandal 1972.)

Out in the open

What does it mean that something comes out in the open? The answer to this question has changed over the latest decades, I believe. I remember the time when there was exactly ONE of what we used to call the public square. But we don’t talk about the public square so often any more. Instead, we have something called the mainstream media, and there are the alternative media.

Before, when something got known in the one and only public square, not only the general public was informed, but also authorities, responsible politicians and the opposition. They all got the chance to react, and some of them also had to react. In special cases, there would be public prosecution. The public prosecutor also sometimes had to react.

Such a system of inevitable public justice still exists in the Russian film from 2013, albeit only in the background. In the little town where the film plays, the corrupt mayor and her many accomplices have built a tight system of power and control. This is what the hero of the film is up against. But there are higher authorities which Mayor & Co do not control. At least the hero can rely on that.

Fight with no end

If you doubt that the latter is true in Russia outside the film, you shall have to check in Russia. I cannot do that (sorry). My concern is the West, and in 2025, I am not so sure if we on our part have such a system of ultimate justice. In the United States, e.g., political corruption seemingly is not a purely political one. Political fights for interests, and over what shall be seen as facts and truth, does not start and end with a plea to the public opinion. It runs through institutions, academic as well as those of formal justice. By any new “gate”, or greater issue, the fight seems to run unpredictably all the way throughout the system. It seemingly never ends, not until the last court order has been rendered and the last police officer has executed it. And how do we know it is the last?

Fight with no friend?

“The Fool” shows interesting things also on the micro level. The hero is a man, but he has a wife and a mother. The two women are not heroes. They neither encourage the hero, nor thank him for his bravery. On the contrary, they actually scold him for his senseless, in their opinion, attempt to fight against the “mafia” of the town. Close to the end of the film we see the hero’s wife driving out of the town with their child. The hero has just told her, that right now he hates her.

This is a kind of conflict which I have seen in a film before. In the 1971 film about Joe Hill, an authentic US trade union activist, playing in about 1910, the hero’s wife also wants her husband to refrain from bravery. In the Henrik Ibsen drama “An Enemy of the People” (written 1882, film version 2005) the wife of the hero tries to moderate her husband’s attempts to expose the dark truth about the town’s polluted water supplies. However, in this case the wife ultimately supports her husband (more convincingly so in the 1882 drama than in the 2005 film).

Returning to the “The Fool”: The male hero also has a father. Of the father the film gives us a mixed impression. We hear that he never went along with corruption, not even on a small scale (like stealing from his work-place). As the hero grew up, the man closest to him modelled honesty. However, when the father now reflects on the upbringing of his child, he says to him “we never taught you how to live”. What exactly does he mean by that? The father seems no longer sure that he did the right thing. But the son is sure!

Being human

Who are the most human – the hero fighting against corruption or the two women, focusing on their families?

In the film, we see that the limited concern of the two women under the corrupt circumstances leaves the families in question with a kind of safe, but also quite miserable, life. Other people we meet, live even more miserably. More than a hundred even risk being killed, since the neglected building they live in is doomed to collapse. We see a large crack running through several floors, widening almost by the hour.

You may, however, interpret the encroaching danger and the widening crack as a symbol of something more. Is the whole society cracking up and soon to collapse?

When corruption reaches a certain level, it becomes so powerful, that it is able to clamp down on remaining opposition. Our opposing hero is certainly clamped down on. Moreover, the corrupt elite of the town also kills two of their “own”.  They shall serve as already vanished scapegoats as a review by higher authorities has become inevitable.

At an occasion, our hero actually gives an answer to the above question about being human. He points to people who readily suffer under corruption instead of reacting. Reacting how? At least talk with your neighbour! You are not a speechless animal, are you? The hero concludes: As long as people (like animals) don’t talk with each other, they must also live like animals.

Our hero makes a last appeal, which goes to the inhabitants of the building soon to collapse. He urges people to get out. But with only one or two exceptions they don’t listen to him.

If this is basically about our society – what do you do? Are you speechless?