REVIEW: Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (2013)

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is a documentary about the imprisonment and trial of three members of the feminist activist group Pussy Riot, who performed a satirical punk song about Putin and the church on the altar of Moscow’s Christ the Saviour Cathedral.

On 21 February 2012, Nadezhda (Nadya) Tolokonnikova, Maria (Masha) Alyokhina and Ekaterina (Katya) Samutsevich were arrested for performing a ‘punk prayer’ on the altar of the church. Their actions outraged Orthodox believers and the state threw its weight behind the church. They were tried for the crime of religious hatred rather than political agitation, which was their intention. The documentary, and the three members of Pussy Riot, suggest that the trial of intentionally misrepresenting their actions as religious rather than political in nature. The documentary also includes interviews with people who feel offended by Pussy Riot’s actions and with members of Pussy Riot still in hiding.

The documentary was funded in part by HBO and BBC and this is where the problems first become apparent. The documentary retells the story, albeit somewhat choppily at the beginning of the film, and offered a range of opinions. As a result, it is a balanced documentary rather than an activist film – one made about Pussy Riot but not by Pussy Riot. This ‘balance’ ultimately deflates any sense of what Pussy Riot either stands for or has achieved by its actions.

The documentary does not go into any depth, preferring to baldly tell the story, making it as enlightening as television news. Members of Pussy Riot are interviewed but they are not asked about what they stand for. This say that they don’t like Putin and that they dislike the close relationship between church and state but they don’t go into any more depth. Most people would agree that Putin is a problematic leader and that close links between church and state are hardly beneficial in this day and age. As a result, the documentary, unlike the clearly brave and committed members of Pussy Riot, never takes any big risks. We only briefly hear of Pussy Riot’s other complaints, usually in the lyrics of their songs – which include references to Putin’s repressive anti-gay laws and sexism. Instead of addressing Pussy Riot’s potentially divisive political rhetoric, this HBO-BBC production prefers to play it safe and emphasise Russia’s unfair and questionable legal system. It does not dare say anything that might offend anybody and effectively silences Pussy Riot itself.

For example, although Pussy Riot claimed that causing religious offence was never the objective – only ‘culture shock’ – the documentary spends quite a lot of time interviewing religious people who were hurt by their performance.             It even takes a look back to the 1920s and 1930s when the anti-religious Bolsheviks and Communists attacked the church, culminating in the demolition of the Cathedral. Instead of sticking with Pussy Riot and its objectives, the documentary justifies the shortsighted outcry of the Orthodox Church by referring back to seventy years of religious oppression. The end result is that the Pussy Riot performance looks misjudged and the perpetrators slightly unfocused. Because we are not told what they want, we don’t really understand their motives, other than as peaceful protests and shock tactics. Of course, the documentary shows a lot of delusional religious figures (one who oddly translates ‘pussy riot’ as ‘deranged vaginas’). Of course, it does represent the patriarchal if sexist as well as the fundamentalist strains within the Orthodox Church but the documentary is so balanced that both sides ultimately appear to be problematic. Complexities are mentioned but not addressed, leaving a shallow documentary that refers to real events and consequences but doesn’t dare look at motives or ideology.

A more brave and, hence, more rousing film would lay bare the problems with Russia and Pussy Riot’s agenda and plans for the future. It would not be so worried about taking its whole audience with it, just as long as it is an accurate representation of what Pussy Riot stands for. We don’t know what they really want other than a more liberal society. Their more extreme cries “Death to sexists” and so on make sense more as typical lyrics to punk songs than as legitimate objectives. Instead the documentary sentimentalises the struggle for justice after the deed is done. During the trial, we see flashbacks of each of the three women detailing their childhoods and political awakening. Ultimately, unlike the agit-prop that the activists themselves use, this documentary relies instead on drama and an underdog storyline.

Although this approach may move more people to sympathize with Pussy Riot, it also means that we never get a sense of Pussy Riot as a valid and radical revolutionary force. They don’t seem to have clear demands and the Cathedral stunt seems to have been badly thought-out. The three women apologize for having caused offence but surely they would have known that people would be offended, since they were occupying (for so brief and innocuous a time) an altar that people do hold sacred. Hence, their martyrdom – and the documentary does paint this as a martyrdom of sorts – is less to do with the great leaps forward that Pussy Riot has achieved and more to do with the unjust and extreme response of the Russian legal system. In the end, it is hard to imagine a member of Pussy Riot appreciating this documentary, particularly since it represents Nadya, Masha and Katya not as heroes but as victims. Bland and ineffectual, the documentary rouses not our inner-activist, merely our inner fellow traveller.

Mike Lerner and Maxim Pozdorovkin are trying to make a political documentary that will raise awareness of both Pussy Riot and their imprisonment, which is at one point compared with the Stalinist show trials. However, by employing a Hollywood language – that of audience-friendly emotional connections, a kind-of happy ending (though one that awkwardly speaks of the group’s lack of solidarity) and a sentimental streak, Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer is far from radical, rousing or brave. It is a tame, balanced work when it should be angry and polemical. Other than as a means to raise awareness of the group, it is pretty ineffective.