Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over

Both as a portrait of an outsider artist and as an account of abuse survival, this film, by Lunch's No Wave contemporary Beth B, is a compulsively watchable cultural document.

The War Is Never Over is as much about trauma and processing and empowerment -- the real kind, not the bumper-sticker-slogan kind -- as it about music, or a musician, or a cultural moment.

As short, anarchic and explosive as a punk song, "Lydia Lunch: The War Is Never Over" remains true to the genre in its approach to the story of the No Wave queen.

Her musings on the condition of womanhood and the failings of conventional feminism are emphatic, to be sure.

A bracing reminder that sexual self-defense can take many forms.

The documentary might have been stronger had there been more of the artist recalling her life and career directly, since she is such a provocative raconteur

Lydia Lunch - "We used to be warriors. Women. How we have devolved. From Medusa to Madonna, from Kali to Courtney Love, from Durga to Uma Thurman.

It may represent the less sexy part of her story, but when it comes to sticking it to the man--Lunch's modus operandi--acting as her own boss was one of the most punk things she ever did.

"Lydia's greatest work of art was herself," one adoring fellow traveler marvels early on, but doesn't that make the curator's job that much more important?

Punk has produced queens because its queens have made punk "rock." Lydia Lunch knows women making noise are women being heard and The War Is Never Over proves her point is perennially sharp.