Kathleen Hanna began her reign in the early ‘90s as the lead singer of pioneering feminist punk band Bikini Kill. The songs are grimy lo-fi anthems, the lyrics of which confront issues of sexual abuse and female empowerment in unflinching detail. Hanna, as shown repeatedly in the film’s seemingly bottomless well of archival concert footage, is the ideal frontwoman.
Her volcanic on-stage performance is captivating and confrontational, and her message so revolutionary that it garnered ire from the predominately male crowds at their shows and frequently resulted in dangerous physical brawls. Hanna, along with bandmates Kathi Wilcox, Tobi Vail and Billy Karren, sought to raise the voices of silenced women through music and art, and were instrumental in the founding of the “Riot Grrrl” movement, which spawned such powerhouse female-led bands as Sleater-Kinney, Bratmobile, L7, The Donnas and countless others.
Hanna’s influence, which stemmed further from her post-Bikini Kill electronic outfit Le Tigre, is unmistakable and widespread. The documentary beautifully captures, through elucidating interviews from a slew of honorable female rockers including Joan Jett, Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein of Sleater-Kinney, Kim Gordon of Sonic Youth and Hanna’s husband Adam Horovitz of the Beastie Boys, the resilient and powerfully determined yet humble driving force she remains today.
What singularizes Sini Anderson’s film is how it examines the life of a legend who is still very much active. The film ends at the dawning of somewhat of a rebirth for Hanna, now in her mid-40s, as she triumphantly returns to the stage with her new band The Julie Ruin, who just this past September released their debut album. The performance immediately follows a tribute concert to Hanna in New York City to an audience oblivious to the at once mysterious physical ailments the iconic punk heroine had been unwittingly facing for years.
The film tracks, in Hanna’s words, her many “origin stories” and culminates in this landmark career moment. What’s remarkable is how little her values and tenacity are compromised in that time. She’s a perpetual lightning rod, so sure of herself and what she’s doing that it comes naturally, and almost seems as though she’s unaware of how influential she’s been for more than 20 years. In the many interviews with Hanna, it’s often jarring how grounded she is, while maintaining a larger-than-life presence that extends far beyond the stage.
The Punk Singer is ostensibly an overview of Hanna’s musical and artistic endeavors, but takes an unexpectedly harrowing turn in the third act. It’s reminiscent of last year’s Hit So Hard: The Life & Near Death Story of Patty Schemel, another terrific modern rockumentary that transcends “Behind the Music” vacuity. That film centers around Schemel, the openly gay drummer of Hole during the band’s heyday, as she grapples with addiction, fame, and Courtney Love, and is told almost entirely with newly unearthed behind-the-scenes footage from the “Live Through This” tour. But where The Punk Singer soars off on its own is when it finally answers head-on the question asked at the top of the film: Why did Kathleen Hanna stop performing in 2005? Not even her peers have a definite answer.
The reasons are eventually confronted in disturbing detail, as the singer announces she has late stage Lyme disease, a diagnosis that took her years to officially receive. It’s morbid symmetry that Hanna began her musical rebellion proclaiming the shroud of female artists, and has since bookended it with a disease that consistently went overlooked by doctors.
It’s unlikely that The Punk Singer will reach many viewers previously unaware of Hanna and her trailblazing history, but Anderson’s candy-colored tribute is currently the first and only deep plunge into the singer’s life and it’s, much like Hanna and her vigorous and commanding voice, intoxicating and unmissable.
Grade: A-
