Craig J. Clark
The first sighting of a Leningrad Cowboy in Aki Kaurismäki’s Leningrad Cowboys Go America (released 35 years ago) is incongruous, but really, that can’t be helped. All sightings of Leningrad Cowboys are incongruous, thanks to their distinctive hairstyles (a pointy pompadour that sticks out about a foot) and boots (also extra-long and pointy). What makes the first sighting stand out is he’s a corpse, lying in an open field with his bass guitar gripped in one hand, pointing straight up, parallel with his hair and boots. That doesn’t prevent his brothers/bandmates from taking him on tour with them, though, so he can see the world outside of their isolated Siberian village.
Prior to sending the band packing, Kaurismäki directed three videos, the first of which – 1986’s Rocky VI – was made the same year he commenced his “Proletariat Trilogy” with Shadows of Paradise. In contrast with the sober and sometimes deadly serious nature of those films, the Leningrad Cowboys pictures tend to be deadpan larks, leaning into the absurdity of whatever situation they’re thrust into. This is certainly true of Rocky VI, a parody of the previous year’s Rocky IV pitting a comically scrawny “Rock’y” against a hulking Russian named Igor. Both are played by members of the band, but the role of Igor’s manager is taken by Kaurismäki regular Matti Pellonpää, who filled a similar function when the time came to make a feature. First, though, came two more shorts, which gave Kaurismäki and the band the opportunity to hone their visual aesthetic.
Hailing from 1987, Thru the Wire takes place “somewhere between ALABAMA and UTAH,” which doesn’t narrow the geography down much, and depicts singer Nicky Tesco breaking out of prison to reunite with his lover. More importantly, it offers the first look at the band’s distinctive hairstyle, which is seen on the drummer, guitarist, and sax player. The whole band is present for its immediate follow-up, L.A. Woman, a straightforward performance of the Doors classic without the need for dramatic or comedic embellishment. There would be plenty of that when Kaurismäki sent them to conquer America.
Working from a story concocted with band members Sakke Järvenpää and Mato Valtonen, Kaurismäki fashioned a rambling road movie that takes the opposite tack of something like A Hard Day’s Night, which firmed up the Fab Four’s individual personalities in the public’s imagination. Instead, the Leningrad Cowboys are presented as a monolithic collective – and credited as such. That’s really the only viable option when dealing with a nine-piece band (including the deceased one) where the members all dress alike, speak very little, and are mostly differentiated by what they play. (At the start, they favor traditional folk instruments, but they pick up more rock trappings as they go along.)
Filling in the personality gap is manager Vladimir (Pellonpää), who takes advantage of his charges the way most management does when looking after the business interests of creative types. When a local impresario determines they have no commercial potential, Vladimir takes them to America, where he’s been told “they’ll buy anything.” When they arrive, though, their booking agent, who was talking about Madison Square Garden and Yankee Stadium before hearing them play, sends them to Mexico to perform at a cousin’s wedding. “Your music will go over big down there,” he says. “Here we have something different. It’s called rock and roll.” Chastened, Vladimir presses a hastily acquired book of sheet music into their hands and instructs them to learn it on the road. Along the way, they stop at roadside bars, playing one-off gigs while expanding their repertoire with such standards as “Rock ‘n’ Roll Is Here to Stay,” “Tequila,” “That’s All Right, Mama,” and “Born to Be Wild.”
Much like their hair and boots, the Leningrad Cowboys stick out wherever they go, giving Kaurismäki license to include as many sight gags as he wants, starting with the coffin on top of their car (bought from a dealer played by Jim Jarmusch) with their bandmate’s hair, boots, and bass sticking out of the lid. There’s also a running gag about Vladimir drinking beer after beer in the front seat and carelessly tossing the empties into the back. This has its payoff when they stop to stretch their legs and, upon opening the doors, dozens of cans spill out onto the pavement. Vladimir gets one more when he delivers the band to Mexico in time for the wedding and wanders off into the desert, but not before getting one last drink from a cactus with a tap stuck in it. “And nobody ever saw him again…” reads the caption that follows, but Kaurismäki wasn’t finished with Vladimir or the Leningrad Cowboys just yet.
Following Go America, the Leningrad Cowboys toured and released records like any other band, with Kaurismäki directing the videos for “Those Were the Days” and “These Boots” (an obvious pick for a cover). Around that time, Jarmusch set one of the stories of his 1991 omnibus Night on Earth in Helsinki, casting Matti Pellonpää as a sleep-deprived cab driver and two of the other actors from the film as his inebriated passengers. That wasn’t the first time he took them for a ride, and it wasn’t the last since Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses came along in 1994.
The Moses in question is Vladimir, with a long, obviously fake beard, who summons them from Mexico (where they had a top ten hit and promptly went to seed) and promises to lead them home. That’s far from the only Biblical allusion inserted into the script (including a moment where Vladimir walks on pool water), which also finds Vladimir stealing the Statue of Liberty’s nose and being doggedly pursued by a CIA man played by André Wilms, Pellonpää’s co-star from Kaurismäki’s La Vie de Bohème. The plot aside, what’s most valuable about Meet Moses is the way, like its predecessor, it eschews the picturesque, documenting run-down areas that were off the beaten path and venues on the verge of vanishing.
Kaurismäki made a different sort of documentary with Total Balalaika Show (also 1994), which captures a performance by the Leningrad Cowboys in front of 70,000 fans backed by the Alexandrov Red Army Chorus and Dance Ensemble. With the focus squarely on the music, there are fewer opportunities for the band to goof off, although there are moments during the Red Army Chorus songs where they’re seen lying on their backs, tapping their boots in time to the music, or strutting around the stage kicking up their boots. If Total Balalaika Show doesn’t quite measure up to the great concert films like Stop Making Sense or The Last Waltz, it’s only because of its brevity. They pack a lot into the hour they have, though, including rousing renditions of the Turtles’ “Happy Together,” Bob Dylan’s “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” ZZ Top’s “Gimme All Your Lovin’,” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama,” while wrapping it all up (appropriately enough) with “Those Were the Days.”
After the one-two punch of Meet Moses and Total Balalaika Show, Kaurismäki took his leave of the band, but continued to cast some of its members as actors in his films. (One, Sakari Kuosmanen, even appears in last year’s Fallen Leaves.) As much as he helped introduce them to a wider, international audience, the Leningrad Cowboys returned the favor by providing him with an outlet for visual gags that would be out of place in his more serious-minded work. A mutually beneficial collaboration if there ever was one.
“Leningrad Cowboys Go America” and its sequels can be found in the Directed by Aki Kaurismäki collection on the Criterion Channel.
