Punk doc keeps rough edges
Gives voice to band members’ challenges, dignity
Punk rock has long been the music of choice for society’s angry outsiders, but it takes on a special meaning in the documentary The Punk Syndrome when a singer named Kari Aalto — one of four mentally handicapped members of a Finnish band called, with fabulous discordance, Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day — begins howling out a song about podiatrists. “F---in’ podiatrists,” he screeches, an apparently extemporaneous lyric brought on when he decides he doesn’t want to pay his weekly visit to have his feet done but he’s told he has to anyway.
Kari, who has a crocodile grin and the anger issues of lead singers everywhere, has an unknown disability. The Punk Syndrome is a verité record of this extraordinary group that doesn’t stop to explain such things as the background of the musicians or how they got together. Instead, it accords them the dignity of simply showing them at work and giving a voice to their concerns as expressed in their music. Kari, for instance, doesn’t want to live in a group home anymore. “I want to live in Kallio in the privacy of a bomb shelter,” he sings, a sentiment that resonates through the punk ethos.
The other members of Pertti Kurikka’s Name Day are Toni Valitalo, a drummer with Down syndrome and a ferociously metronomic beat; bassist Sami Helle, a political activist who also has Down syndrome; and Pertti himself, the lead guitarist whose self-excoriating diary provides much of the material for the band’s songs. Speech Defect, for instance (“They give me pig food in the nuthouse/ I keep my mouth shut; otherwise I’ll be stabbed”) or Decision-Makers Are Cheaters (“They lock people up in closed rooms/ but we don’t want to be in those rooms.”)
Pertti, who has cerebral palsy, weeps easily, but he can also evoke a hard-nosed stage presence when he urges the crowd to get up and dance. When he talks about how his mother died and he wasn’t invited to the funeral, we get a glimpse into a lonely and tormented life. At one stage, he throws himself a “rock and roll birthday party” and an arriving guest, who notes, “You’re wearing pants this time.” As a matter of incidental interest, he is also obsessed with the seams of clothing, and he enjoys rubbing his face in a sleeve and hissing like a snake.
Likewise, their social life is unusual in the context of a punk band, although it revolves around the usual interests, i.e. women. Kari, who’s about to get engaged to a disabled woman whom he likes because “she’s chubby enough and big” and also nice to him, asks the others to explain how babies are made (Kari is 35 years old.) Toni, meanwhile, has a heartbreaking encounter with a young woman whom he likes but who is dating a different man.
The Punk Syndrome follows the band through a few gigs, including a tour in Germany, and directors Jukka Karkkainen and Jani-Petteri Passi let the story tell itself: the jealousies, the camaraderie, the devotion and the feuds, all familiar but given a deeper meaning in the stripped-away honesty of these men. It’s a sketchy and raggedy film, but like punk music, it probably would have been spoiled if it were smoothed out. As it stands, it’s an extraordinary introduction to an amazing group.