The Fool in the Dangerous Building is one of the best Russian works in recent years. The film won the Catholic Humanitarian Spirit Award at the 67th Locarno International Film Festival and the Don Quijote Award Special Nominee.
The film tells the story of plumber Dima Nikitin who confronts Russia's entire corrupt bureaucracy in order to save the lives of more than 800 people in a dangerous building.
Plumber Dima Nikitin is a man of integrity and kindness, and the public benches in the community are often damaged by bear children, only he and his father always repair it repeatedly for free, while the others in the community do not care.
The father is loyal and honest, poor and determined, does not know how to bribe and engage in relationships, and does not use the convenience of work like others to lead the sheep, so it is natural to be regarded as an alien and alienated by the people around him, and the mother often strongly condemns it.
Nikitin and his parents, wife and children and a family of five are crammed into a house of more than ten square meters, with a meager income and a poor life. The wife constantly hinted that Nikiding was going to bribe the leader, and the mother scolded them for being brainy and living in the mud all their lives.
The family is not harmonious, the outside is full of cold eyes, and the frustrated father laments to Nikitin:
After sixty years of life, not a single friend, not a single enemy, everyone saw me, far away.....
At the beginning of the film, this simple episode portrays the honest father and son, and also depicts the smoke miasma of this Russian town from the side.
In such an environment, tragedy is destined to happen!!
One night, Nikiding received a phone call that the hot water pipe in a tube building full of people on the ground floor had broken. Originally did not belong to their own maintenance jurisdiction, but the boss was drunk, the matter was urgent, and under the balance, it was still obligatory to go.
When he arrived at the scene, he found a more serious problem.
A 40-year-old old tube building, the wall is mottled, covered with oil, two huge cracks in the load-bearing wall, the first floor runs through to the ninth floor, the whole building is tilted, the foundation is peeling and displacement, the swing of the unit is visible to the naked eye, shocking!
Nikiding couldn't believe that such a dangerous building had gone unnoticed.
He asked the property manager in charge of the building: Hasn't this building, which has existed for forty years, been repaired?
The man calmly told him that the maintenance fee he had set aside was only to paint the color of the wall every time, and the rest was stuffed into his own pocket. The fire department has already taken care of it, and every year it comes just a walk through the motions.
Nikiding returned home with trepidation and uneasiness, opened the computer and flipped through the building data.
After investigation, it was found that the rigidity coefficient of a nine-storey slab building was not allowed to tilt more than 5 degrees, and the apartment had been tilted by about 10 degrees. According to the description of this deviation angle, the tilt of the apartment building has exceeded the maximum deviation point of the vertical gravity bearing. This means that the building is slowly tipping over and will not stand for more than a day!
More than 200 families, 820 lives, in danger!
The more Nikitin thought about it, the more frightened he became, tossing and turning, and the uneasiness of his conscience forced him to act. He woke up from his bed and got up to go to the mayor, hoping to persuade the mayor to dismiss the family as soon as possible. The mayor happened to be hosting his own birthday party at a hotel that night.
After meeting the mayor, although he knew that the atmosphere was not right, Nikiddin bravely reported the seriousness of the situation to the mayor and solemnly told her that the building would not stand for more than a day.
Although unbelievable, the mayor also knew how serious the matter was, and that night she summoned the heads of the various ministries. This includes the chief engineer, the fire chief, the chief of police, and one of his own think tanks.
On the big night, because of a sentence from Nikidine, everyone had to come from the feast and drunkenness and the dream. Everyone saw Nikiddin and thought he was a shameful rumor-monger.
When the chief engineer and the fire chief followed Nikiding to the scene to confirm the situation, they brought back the conclusion of the investigation: the dangerous building would fall at any time, and the whole atmosphere became solemn.
Unfortunately, the solemnity is not because 820 people can die at any time, but because this matter will implicate everyone.
All the key members of the government gathered together for a round table, the real contradictions broke out, the facts of corruption were revealed layer by layer, and the war of mutual tearing was about to erupt.
The budget for building repairs has long been divided up by various interest groups, and once 820 lives disappear with the collapse of the building, the responsibility will be put on the table, and everyone will suffer at that time. Everyone blamed each other and exposed each other's shortcomings, and there was no time to think of a way to solve the problem of the building.
Only the mayor seems to be still conscientious and sober, trying to solve the problem as best he can.
However, what happened next this night completely overturned the three views of Nikiding and the audience.
The reason why corruption can happen under the eyes of the mayor. There is only one answer, and that is that the mayor is also a member of this interest group!
After years of corruption, the government had no money or place to resettle the 820 people. The mayor is restless, what the hell to do...
In fact, the female mayor is most worried about the dead in her heart, but she climbed from the bottom to the high position, used to currying favor with her superiors, and closed her eyes to the subordinates, not to mention that she has long chosen to stand in line, compared to facing the death of ordinary people, she cares more about her official position.
At this time, her think tank reminded her:
I don't care what other people think, you can't fish, then you live like a worm.....
Here, you either live like a person or like an animal, and not everyone can live a good life.
You want everyone to live a good life, you have nothing left, all of us become food, is that good?
In the end, the mayor made a choice that was worse than the underworld - planning to kill Nikidine, then use the chief engineer and the fire chief as scapegoats, and then set fire to all the bills and documents....
This film can be said to be very realistic, although there are individual challenges to the forces of evil, but it is by no means the heroism of justice overcoming evil through hardships.
During the whole process, he could only be surprised and frightened by what was happening in front of him. Other than that, he was almost powerless and passive.
What is even more valuable is that the director has a higher breadth and depth of social realism and criticism.
The dangerous building involves not only corruption, but also 820 foolish people.
People live in their own comfort zones, where they can find a sense of security and comfort, but like frogs in warm water, they become numb, ignorant, and autistic. The obvious cracks in the building and the fact that it had tilted were completely invisible.
They are hateful because they eat, drink, gamble and spend their days empty. But they are very pitiful, some live in the domestic violence of their husbands, and some live in poverty.
They all need love and hope, but the irreducible stupidity and indifference.
When Nikiddin fled with his wife and children overnight, passing through the dangerous building again on the way, Nikiding could not convince himself to give up the lives of these 820 people to escape alone, so he abandoned his wife and children and returned to the dangerous building, asking people to evacuate immediately.
When nikitin woke everyone up with his life, everyone was dismissive, and ignorance gave them the courage and capital to see everything.
On a cold morning, a group of people gathered in front of the dangerous building, but the building did not collapse, and some people began to complain that Nikiding had disturbed their lives, and even they punched and kicked him because of the panic and commotion that Nikidin brought early in the morning.
The flesh-and-blood young man beat nikidine to death, and after the nickytin was crushed, everyone returned to the dangerous building.
Neither the corruption of the officials nor the threat of death brought down Nikitin, while the stupidity and indifference of 820 completely overwhelmed him.
In the last overhead shot, Nickytin, dressed in red, curled up motionless in a gray background, we can't imagine how much pain and despair Nikidin has in mind.
The dangerous building is a good political metaphor. The edifice will fall because cracks have appeared from the foundation to the upper layers, and the sins of the collective begin with the sins of the individual.
In the beginning, some people were corrupt and some people were silent.
When this evil forms a group of forces, all distortions and horrors become taken for granted.
There are groups responsible for shutting up the truth, and there are groups that will cooperate to live in the building that will fall.
In front of a group of pigs, every day is a quiet year.
So Nikitin indignantly told his selfish wife:
Don't you understand that we live together like pigs and die like pigs because neither of us is one of us!
Everyone will not only become exquisite self-interested, but even degenerate into the devil.
When the mayor gave a terrible instruction, she said remorsefully and helplessly: May God forgive me.
But her brains went so far as to tell her that God had come up with this life and let us live in it.
Man is so deceitful that he can push the blame for his sins to God!
At the end of the film, the director does not tell us whether the building has collapsed, but we all know that human nature has collapsed, politics has collapsed, trust has collapsed...
The film is reminiscent of another award-winning short film, The Bridge, many years ago.
Both stories are very similar, the father in "The Bridge" sacrificed the life of his lovely son to save the passengers on the train, and the passengers on the car are like people in a very dangerous building.
They lived in emptiness and depravity, looking indifferently at their weeping fathers on the train. They didn't know what had just happened, just as the people in the dangerous building had no idea what nikitin was doing.
And "The Fool of the Dangerous Building" is obviously more cold and desperate than "The Bridge". The ignorant majority, not just on the sidelines, but also punches and kicks nikitin.
And in history, ten thousand times more desperate than Nikitin is Jesus.
Jesus redeemed the world with truth and love, but was condemned to death on the cross. When he was caught, the disciples who had been carefully taught for many years scattered and fled. And those who once regarded him as Savior are now crying out to condemn Jesus to death.
But unlike Nikitin, Jesus still prayed to the Father on the cross for these "fools":
Forgive them, for they have done, and they do not know.
What a grace!
When some people watch "The Fool in the Dangerous Building", they will feel that they are Nikidine, and when they think of Jesus, they will feel that they are the fools living in the pleasures of sin in the Dangerous Building.
Under the sun, there is nothing new.
Fallen human beings are inherently resistant to the truth, and we have no capacity to do good!
Without faith and God, we are all sinners living in a dangerous building, and the final outcome is to collapse with the "heaven on earth".