Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (2013)

Liberalism gone loony

RELEASED IN 2013 and directed by Mike Lerner & Maxim Pozdorovkin, "Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer" is a documentary about the feminist/anti-Putin Russian punk rock collective, Pussy Riot, and the arrest & trial of three of its main members (Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich) for their offensive protest “performance” at a Moscow cathedral in 2012 wherein they were charged with hooliganism motivated by enmity toward a religious group and disturbing the social order.

I have an obvious message for these three women (aged 22, 23 and 29 respectively at the time of the events): If you don’t want to go to jail don’t enact hateful criminal protests. Let me put it this way: What if several conservative Christians visited whatever dive they “perform” at and carried out a mocking, hostile rant against them and their ilk? They’d be incensed and immediately put a stop to it, not to mention press charges to prevent it from happening again.

Speaking of “performing,” the girls’ music is laughably trite punk ditties. Separated from the political hype, their cacophonies wouldn’t register even a blip on the punk/rock/metal barometer.

A couple of the females are asked what they’re protesting against and one of them says they’re objecting to the (supposed) Russian expectation of women to have babies and do little else in society. But (1.) no one’s forcing her or anyone else to have babies and (2.) the movie itself shows women in all kinds of significant professions in Russia, including two judges, a prominent lawyer and police officers. It’s a classic case of rebel without a cause. If they don’t like Putin, fine, vote against him and look into becoming a politician. If you don’t like the conservative sway in current Russian culture, then do your part to respectfully influence society to your point of view, which would include offering a positive example of your (supposedly superior) belief system.

Instead, these women opted for outrageous acts in their 3-year protest against the Russian government, culminating in the sacrilegious incident at the Russian Orthodox cathedral: They stuck poultry up their you-know-whats in supermarkets, spray-painted vulgar graffiti on bridges, staged an unbelievable public orgy at a museum when Nadya was eight-months pregnant, which is actually shown in the movie for like 10 seconds (two clips). Seriously? In response, Putin expressed “I’m surprised they weren’t arrested prior to this.” So am I.

The flick is evenhanded in that it lacks a biased narration and simply shows the actual footage, translating the Russian verbiage into English, with a smattering of interviews with parents, husbands and whoever. It’s a fascinating documentary in that it reveals modern Russian culture, its predominant values and lunatic fringe. I was surprised to observe that the elder disciples of the Russian Orthodox Church resemble formidable American bikers more than anything else.

Despite these positives, I’m not giving the film a higher rating because it foolishly sides with the girls. Which is baffling since anyone with a modicum of common sense can see that they got precisely what their doofus behavior deserved. If a group of conservatives in America did what these women did, but enacted toward liberal people & institutions, they’d be lambasted by the lamestream media and imprisoned for years for hooligan hate crimes. Of course loony libertines are notorious for their hypocritical double standards.

THE MOVIE RUNS 1 hour 28 minutes.

GRADE: C-