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.

Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses

Dir: Aki Kaurismäki

1994

*****

I absolutely adored Aki Kaurismaki’s 1989 film LeningradCowboys Go America but it was one of the rare films that I would argue didn't need a sequel. However, I'm so glad he made one. Just as you thought the Leningrad Cowboy’s story couldn't get any more surreal, it does, and then some. It could never have the same impact of the first film, so the change in direction was cleverly though out and I would say it's probably funnier. The character of Moses, played by the late great Matti Pellonpää, is inspired. Half the band die of tequila poisoning, Siberia becomes "the Promised Land" and the Statue of Liberty gets her nose stolen. If that's not great writing, I don't know what is. After the events of the first film, the band (now a real band and not just a fictional one), have been enjoying success in Mexico. Enjoying success a little too much in some cases, as half the bad have become tequila alcoholics and half of them have died of excessive drinking. The rest have become fully fledged Mexicans, represented by the fact they have all grown moustaches and wear Ponchos (but still have their pompadours and winklepickers of course). Destitute and down on their luck, the band suddenly receives a telegram requesting their presence at a gig in Coney Island, New York. Igor, now their road manager, smuggles them across the border and gets them to New York, where they discover the sender of the telegram is none other than their ex-manager Vladimir (once again played by the brilliant Matti Pellonpää). Since Vladimir abandoned the band in Mexico at the end of the last film, he had gone through the experience of being re-born and now goes by the name Moses. He explains to them that, for purposes that are to be explained later, they must travel back to the Promised Land (Siberia). They agree and they board a boat back to Europe, just after Moses steals the Statue of Liberty’s nose as a souvenir. Instead of taking the boat, Moses stows away on the wing of a plane which he promptly falls off mid-flight and lands in the sea. He is reunited with the band as he is washed up at precisely the same time and place as their boat is harboured. Meanwhile, a CIA agent has learned of the missing nose and it hot on Moses’s tail. When the band is met by old friends from Serbia, they all take a bus to Brest to play the first of a few gigs in order to make money for travel. The CIA agent soon catches up with them and poses as a record producer but is soon found out and held prisoner by the band. They stop at Frankfurt, Leipzig, the Czech Republic, Poland and Russia and find out their quest has something to do with the birth of a sacred calf but it’s a ridiculous ruse. Eventually the CIA agent also becomes born again and the bad live happily ever after in Siberia, where, people have warmed to them since their departure. There is always a fear that the sequel will tar a memory but not here. Everything that made the original film great is matched and bettered. One wonders whether they might have had another film in them, rather than Total Balalaika Show which is a concert movie. It’s a nonsensical masterpiece with music, my kind of silly and just about the coolest comedy ever made.

Leningrad Cowboys Go America
Dir: Aki Kaurismäki
1989
*****
Leningrad Cowboys Go America is ridiculous, absurd, hilarious, ingenious, rock ‘n’ roll (more punk though in many respects) and just plain brilliant. I love Aki Kaurismäki's films but this is his stand out piece, probably what he’s best known and loved for, and for good reason. It’s a bizarre and somewhat surreal project, the 'cult' film every good director has inside them. I suppose it is a road movie at heart, although it is also about the music and lifestyle of the biggest rock band of all time who haven’t quite made it yet. The Leningrad Cowboys themselves were made up of members of Finnish rock group Sleepy Sleepers and several session musicians for the film but after the film’s success, and because of the fun they had making it, they actually transformed themselves into a real band and enjoyed a fair bit of success. The name of the band comes from the Marx brother’s 1940 film Go West and their costumes (foot-high quiff hairstyles and two metre-long winklepickers) feels like something the comedy group would wear, had they made been alive in the 70s and collaborated with Salvador Dali. The story is simple, the rockabilly surrealists have had no success in Siberia so decide instead to tour America and hope for success there because everyone knows that people will “buy anything” over there. They arrive at the CBGB bar in Manhattan and find an agent who gets them a gig at a wedding in Mexico. So they buy a used 1975 Cadillac Fleetwood 75 Limousine, strap a coffin carrying their frozen band member (who stayed out all night the night before) onto the roof and set off to earn their way through the Deep South, adapting their musical style to suit local tastes at each new location. All the while they are being exploited by their money and food hoarding manager Vladimir (played the utterly brilliant Matti Pellonpää), who has a seemingly unlimited supply of beer in the ice-filled coffin. Meanwhile, Igor, the bands one and only fan from Siberia, who stowed away on the plane, follows the band by his own means of transportation. When he finally catches up with them, they appoint him as their road manager. Along the way the band are reunited with a long-lost cousin (Nicky Tesco) whose singing gives positive reception from audiences and secures him a place in the band. The group are arrested, have their engine stolen and close down a club but finally get to Mexico. The bass player is finally thawed out after being force-fed tequila, Igor joins the band on stage and they become a huge hit in Mexico, entering the music charts in the top 10. American director Jim Jarmusch, a huge Kaurismäki fan, makes a cameo as a used car dealer and blues guitarist Duke Robillard and rockabilly legend Colonel Robert Morris also make appearances and give the film that cool seal of approval. It is a cool film too, because as ridiculous and surreal as it is, it also taps into the whole ‘search for the American dream’ thing, while also working as a visually compelling American road movie and a rock ‘n’ roll biopic. The humour is of the highest quality of silly, it’s impossible not to love the Cowboys or want to actually go to one of their gigs. The musicians aren’t actors but they are performers. There is something very rewarding about watching a bunch of talented and likable people being silly and enjoying themselves. It is a rare example of a film living up to its brilliant title. There is a unique humour in all of Kaurismäki’s films but there is also a level of sadness. Leningrad Cowboys Go America is his one film whereby humour and adventure are the only goals and he manages it effortlessly. All the ingredients are there, this is how you make a raw independent film, it may be the last of its kind and it is certainly the best.