Red Penguins (2020) Drinking Game
Take a Sip: for every cool-looking logo
Take a Drink: every time Steve says something dickishly
Take a Drink: for every reference to crime or extortion
Do a Shot: every time the film gets around to discussing hockey
By: Henry J. Fromage (Three Beers) –
One of my English students when I spent a year teaching in Russia was a middle-aged gentleman who often generously drove me home. We had all sorts of elucidating chats, but the one that stuck out the most was his recounting of the fall of the USSR, and the pure chaos that ensued. He votes for Putin, who got credit for restoring a sense of order and normalcy after those gangster and inflation-ridden times, which answered for me the question of how the man stays in power. The people who remember those times never want to return to them.
Red Penguins is a documentary principally set in those times, but focused on a business venture of the Pittsburgh Penguins, who partner with the storied Russian National Team in a bid to build good ‘ol capitalist professional hockey in post-Soviet Russia.
A Toast
Red Penguins really is a documentary about extreme culture clash between the American capitalists outside of their comfort zone and Russians trying to find their place in a suddenly new world. It’s also a sneaky depiction of a society undergoing a turbulence of almost unprecedented scope. A society that in a blink of an eye went from complete control to complete freedom. A maelstrom of disorder and opportunity- and the types of people ready to seize opportunity at any cost.
It is often funny in a Bill Veeck sort of way- the sorts of sports promotions these cheeky, inventive Americans come up with and their clever negotiation of obstacles both cultural and logistical is a film unto itself, and one that occasionally gets the shrift it deserves. However, it keeps getting drawn back to the macro socipolitical view, and how can’t it be?
Anyone asking how we got the Russia of today just needs to look at these times. It’s not too much of a leap to understand why the citizenry chose then, and has continued to choose, the security and stability of a classic Russian strongman to the chaotic uncertainty of those times. Better the devil you know.
Beer Two
Stylistically director Gabe Polsky curates period footage quite well, but overlays cutesy graphics and animation at other points that is a bit too tongue in cheek. It all comes off at times as trying a bit too hard, when the content speaks for itself.
Beer Three
It’s also not hard to detect a bit of a patronizing tone towards the Russians involved in the business. Steve Warshaw, the principal American businessman interviewed, does indeed come off as “an asshole with a handle” as he was colorfully nicknamed by his business partners, and yet so much of the film is filtered through his POV. It was surely a wild and crazy period in his life, but he describes it with none of the sociopolitical context the rest of the film does a better job of conveying.
Verdict
Red Penguins is ostensibly a sports documentary about culture clash, but ends up being a fascinating depiction of a momentous social change in Russia.
