The Finnish auteur Aki Kaurismäki has essentially made the same kind of film over and over again: against a muted colour palette, Finnish actors recite their lines with the most robotic of deadpan delivery. Though these films are set in the present day, at some point an oldies band will appear on a stage playing rockabilly, Finnish tangos or other music of the 1950s. Already these elements add up to something absurd, but with 1989's LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO America Kaurismäki produced possibly his most absurd film yet.
As the film opens, "somewhere in the tundra", we meet the Leningrad Cowboys, an extravagantly quiffed Russian band with no following besides the mute village idiot, Igor, and one of their members froze to death the previous night when he stayed outside rehearsing. Unable to make it in their home country, this Russian band -- which is in fact played by Finnish actors who could never pass as Russians -- sets out for America with their fallen bandmate in a coffin. After they arrive in New York, they are booked for a wedding in Mexico, necessitating a cross-country drive where they perform in a series of shabby bars across the Deep South. They are led by their manager Vladimir (Matti Pellonpää), who spends their meagre earnings on luxury for himself while starving the band. Unbeknownst to them, the village idiot Igor, who aspires to be one of them, has arrived in the United States too in pursuit.
The America shown in this film is much like in the early work of Kaurismäki's fellow filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (and indeed Jarmusch makes a cameo as a used car salesman and Kaurismäki borrows elements of Jarmusch's film MYSTERY TRAIN that was being shot at the same time in Memphis). The films the glamorous locations seen in Hollywood films for a backdrop of overgrown vacant lots, rusting junkyards and small-town bars full of lower-class drunks. The film is a series of vignettes preceded by title cards, and in each one the band is in a different place than in the last as they work their way towards Mexico. Kaurismäki pays homage to the American blues and rockabilly tradition by casting Duke Robillard and Colonel Robert Morris in small parts.
In this era when goofy humour that evokes laughs but has little re-watch value is instantly available on the web, LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO America no longer feels like such the essential viewing that critics in decades past called it. Nonetheless, if you are a fan of Kaurismäki's aesthetics, you'll probably enjoy seeing it once.
As the film opens, "somewhere in the tundra", we meet the Leningrad Cowboys, an extravagantly quiffed Russian band with no following besides the mute village idiot, Igor, and one of their members froze to death the previous night when he stayed outside rehearsing. Unable to make it in their home country, this Russian band -- which is in fact played by Finnish actors who could never pass as Russians -- sets out for America with their fallen bandmate in a coffin. After they arrive in New York, they are booked for a wedding in Mexico, necessitating a cross-country drive where they perform in a series of shabby bars across the Deep South. They are led by their manager Vladimir (Matti Pellonpää), who spends their meagre earnings on luxury for himself while starving the band. Unbeknownst to them, the village idiot Igor, who aspires to be one of them, has arrived in the United States too in pursuit.
The America shown in this film is much like in the early work of Kaurismäki's fellow filmmaker Jim Jarmusch (and indeed Jarmusch makes a cameo as a used car salesman and Kaurismäki borrows elements of Jarmusch's film MYSTERY TRAIN that was being shot at the same time in Memphis). The films the glamorous locations seen in Hollywood films for a backdrop of overgrown vacant lots, rusting junkyards and small-town bars full of lower-class drunks. The film is a series of vignettes preceded by title cards, and in each one the band is in a different place than in the last as they work their way towards Mexico. Kaurismäki pays homage to the American blues and rockabilly tradition by casting Duke Robillard and Colonel Robert Morris in small parts.
In this era when goofy humour that evokes laughs but has little re-watch value is instantly available on the web, LENINGRAD COWBOYS GO America no longer feels like such the essential viewing that critics in decades past called it. Nonetheless, if you are a fan of Kaurismäki's aesthetics, you'll probably enjoy seeing it once.