Culture

Rating: 3/5

It’s a story that has begged to be told outside of the news media. Maxim Pozdorovkin and Mike Lerner’s Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is an intriguing documentary that tells the story of how and why three young activists were arrested and prosecuted for publicly opposing the Russian government and Orthodox church.

The film takes us right to the beginning, as Vladimir Putin reclaims control of Russia. Many, especially the youth of the country, stage protests in defiance of what they see as a move away from democracy and the return of dictatorship. The same day that Putin returns to power, Pussy Riot is formed. The feminist punk rock group delivers their anti-Putin message through social media: donning fluorescent balaclavas and bright dresses, they tell the masses that they plan on revolting peacefully against the Russian establishment. And they do.

The documentary runs more or less chronologically. After Pussy Riot is formed, the group stages several guerilla performances at which they “rock out” – read kicking and punching while shouting politically-charged lyrics – at various locations symbolic of Russia’s power structure. Then, the big one happens: they storm the altar of Russian Orthodoxy’s most prized edifice, the Cathedral of Christ the Savior, and perform “Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin away!” Bowing and praying, the group yells “Shit! Shit! It’s God Shit!” as attempts are made to physically remove them from the cathedral.

What ensues is a tale of incarceration. Within days, Maria Alyokhina, Nadezhda Tolokonnikova and Yekaterina Samutsevich are arrested for anti-religious hooliganism and held without bail.

Throughout the documentary the viewer is privy to firsthand footage of Pussy Riot’s public performances, their rehearsals before the cathedral performance, and their trial. In between this direct chain are interviews with their families and those representing the Russian authorities and the Orthodox Church. The conflict becomes clear: it is a battle between young and old.

Not that this is necessarily wrong, but this is not an objective documentary. The viewer is pressed to feel sympathy and compassion for the women arrested. The hopelessness surrounding their chance of acquittal is frighteningly conveyed during the course of their trial. The oppressive zeal of those who want Pussy Riot punished is expressed through interviews.

To help the viewer realise the extent of the indoctrination within the Russian Orthodoxy, the documentary includes footage of a number of ultra-orthodox men who look like they belong to a religious biker gang, proudly wearing black leather vests and grizzled beards. We learn that they think of the young women on trial as demons and witches. Basically, they come across as bat shit crazy.

Quickly, the viewer gets the picture that the opinions, thoughts and overall feminist message of the group are ideals of equality not shared by the power elite or by the Orthodox Church and their practitioners. Sporadic, “bullet point” history lessons are offered in order to give viewers a sense of Russia’s cultural context, but the film essentially relies on Western prefigured assumptions regarding Russia’s penchant for extreme ideology and ruthless handling of dissenters to generate sympathy on behalf of the incarcerated members of Pussy Riot. Though the moral message of the film is justified, a deeper treatment of Russia’s history of revolution and martyrdom could have prompted viewers to consider Pussy Riot’s actions as located within a deeper cultural truth that symbolises Russia’s turbulent past.

Bertolt Brecht’s famous quote, “Art is not a mirror held up to reality, but a hammer with which to shape it” introduces Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer. However, can it be both? At the end we are faced with two of the three members of Pussy Riot on trial sentenced to two years in a penal colony. Is their art, in some form or another, not dissimilar to the revolutionaries before them? Were they not demonised publicly in a show trial as a result? Though the world now knows what happened – thanks in part to this documentary – deeper fissures have not been cast across Russia’s political and religious landscape as a result. Rather, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer may simply offer a magnified image of the “new Russia” for the rest of the world to see from afar.