Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer (Cinema)

Starring: Mariya Alyokhina, Natalia Alyokhina, Mark Feygin, Yekaterina Samutsevich, Vladimir Putin
Director: Mike Lerner, Maxim Pozdorovkin
Running Time: 88 mins
Certificate: 18
Release Date: July 5th 2013

On February 21st 2012, five members of the Russian punk protest group Pussy Riot decided to put on a performance at Moscow’s Christ The Saviour Cathedral. While a service was in progress they went up to the altar – dressed in the band’s trademark balaclavas – and started to sing. While they were stopped by security, footage of the event was soon turned into a video called, ‘Punk Prayer – Mother of God, Chase Putin Away!’, which protested what they see as the increasingly oppressive regime of Vladimir Putin and the Russian Othodox Leader’s support for him.

A few weeks later three Pussy Riot members – Nadezhda Tolokonnikova, Maria Alyokhina and Yekaterina Samutsevich – were arrested and charged with hooliganism.

Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer looks at the women, their cause and the story of what happened to them, using plenty of great footage, as well as interviews with their families to explore what has become a cause celebre. The women’s case has been taken up by the likes of Amnesty International, criticised by western governments, as well as by fellow musician such as musicians including Madonna, Sting, and Yoko Ono.

It’s an interesting documentary. However I’m now in danger of sounding like a tool of the regime – which I really don’t want to, as I think Putin and his increasingly autocratic way of doing things are pretty repugnant – but the documentary tries to paint Pussy Riot as prisoners of conscience held by a repressive government, but their actions don’t quite uphold that.

They insist that they are peaceful artists and musicians, but there’s footage of them singing a song in Red Square where they promote violent armed revolution. Likewise with the cathedral protest, it’s not like they were invited – they stormed in and tried to shock. However much we may not like it because we’re not fans of the way Putin does things, the fact is if Pussy Riot has done the same thing pretty much anywhere in the world, they would have been arrested and charged with something. Perhaps they wouldn’t have been given two years in prison, but if they’d promoted the violent overthrow of government outside the House Of Parliament before interrupting a service in Westminster Abbey, we wouldn’t be thinking of them a prisoners of conscience.

Even so it’s interesting, especially how it tries to show how Russia’s past, both its revolutionary tendencies and how the anti-Christian purges of the early Soviet era may have influenced both Pussy Riot and the backlash from the Othodox Christian side (although it’s tough to know how representative it is, the Christians portrayed do seem as upset it was women involved as the fact it happened at all).

It is odd that I was more sympathetic to Pussy Riot before I watched the documentary, but that’s the problem with so many international cause celebres – we go along with them because we agree with the aims, even if what they’ve actually done isn’t quite as innocent as it might initially look. Two years in prison is ridiculously harsh, but I still have the feeling that if it had happened in the UK, we wouldn’t have been as angry, and many would have decried the methods if not the aims.

But let me just say Putin is a dick whose hold on power is worrying, and his human rights and LGBT rights is getting increasingly terrible. While the documentary looks at the influences on Pussy Riot, perhaps it should also have mentioned Russia’s history of autocratic rulers who don’t quite get the idea of democracy or the populace having opinions of their own. Putin is just playing into that, and the entire country is in danger of becoming his fiefdom. Things need to change, but I’m not sure if doing things the Pussy Riot way is gonna help.

Maybe the next documentary can look at gay people having their rights violated – just a couple days ago, a young man who help his own solo Pride parade after authorities denied him the right to hold a proper one, was arrested, beaten up and went missing for two days. There are plenty of people being silenced in Russia who aren’t promoting violence, as no matter what Pussy Riot say they’re about, that’s essentially what they’re doing.

Reviewer: Tim Isaac