Total Balalaika Show

Dir: Aki Kaurismäki

1994

*****

I found an old music festival poster while sorting through junk in my house the other day. I was amazed at just how many great bands had been playing while I was watching absolute garbage somewhere else at another stage. I didn’t know of many of the great bands there, indeed, many weren’t very big at the time but the list of bands I missed, that I will never be able to see again, is long. The number of gigs I’ve missed, thinking that I was tired and I’d see them next time, is disgustingly long too. Sometimes living in London I forget just how lucky I am to see so many great artists play in venues just down the road from me, I take it for granted. Now, I’ve never been to Helsinki, have no plans to go and certainly didn’t go in 1994 but, if the Leningrad Cowboys announced they were getting back together, resurrecting passed members and playing tomorrow, I’d be on the next plane. Total Balalaika Show is the concert I’d go to if I had a time machine. The concert features the was fictional, now factual band Leningrad Cowboys, who featured in Aki Kaurismäki’s 1989 film Leningrad Cowboys Go America and its sequel, LeningradCowboys Meet Moses. The Cowboys are joined on stage by The Alexandrov Ensemble, the official army choir of the Russian armed forces. The concert took place on 12 June 1993 on Senate Square in Helsinki, Finland. The event drew a crowd of approximately 70,000 people from two nations - Finland and Russia (the fictional band were Russian, the real band were Finnish) - that had been engaged in a state of "peaceful coexistence" during the Cold War. The concert featured an eclectic mix of Western rock and Russian folk music, and folk dancers performing to rock songs. These included:

•        Finlandia

•        Let's Work Together

•        The Volga Boatmen's Song

•        Happy Together

•        Delilah

•        Knockin' on Heaven's Door

•        Oh, Field

•        Kalinka

•        Gimme All Your Lovin'

•        Jewelry Box

•        Sweet Home Alabama

•        Dark Eyes

•        Those Were The Days

Now it’s not much of a movie, but more of a performance. The same could be said for both Leningrad Cowboys Go America and Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses, you just have to let yourself be engulfed by its satisfyingly surreal style. It feels like the final chapter of a trilogy and the completion of a bigger story; the band finally made it, both fictionally and in real life. It’s my favourite concert movie by far.