DVD OF THE WEEK: Aki Kaurism�ki's Leningrad Cowboys
by Vadim Rizov 
Criterion's DVD box-set release (on their Eclipse label) of
Aki Kaurism�ki's loose-knit
Leningrad Cowboys trilogy chronicles eight years in the group's history, from their ramshackle fictional roots to becoming a bona fide crowd-pleaser for 70,000 real Finns. A fake Siberian cover band that rarely performs original material, they're actually versatile performers. And aside from their idiosyncratic attire (lengthy pompadours extend and hang like diving boards from their foreheads, mirrored by outrageously long and pointy elf shoes), they're typical Kaurism�ki characters who enjoy diligent beer drinking whenever possible, staring to deadpan effect?and furthermore, showing no visible facial reactions to anything. The members of
Sleepy Sleepers first teamed up with Kaurism�ki for 1986?s eight-minute, faux-MTV epic
"Rocky VI," a fictional rock pastiche that rewrites
Rocky IV?s triumphant ending, an early sign of Kaurism�ki?s interest in toying with Cold War imagery.
In 1989's
Leningrad Cowboys Go America, the band flees their indeterminate tundra for America, where they wander down from New York City and head south, driving West to Texas until they finally slink into Mexico. The country they tour isn't the clich�d Sad But Beautiful America so many foreign directors wish to find in the U.S. (think
Paris, Texas or
My Blueberry Nights) but an atomized, disconnected series of dingy bars, chemical plants and rural urban decay. Under the direction of abusive manager Vladimir (Matti Pellonp��)?who mostly tosses beer cans at the backseat band members and denies them food?the Cowboys deliver ripping versions of "Tequila," "Born to Be Wild" and other rock chestnuts. The joke is that these Finns-pretending-to-be-dispossessed-Soviets are a terrific act whose accordion and stand-up bass are totally serviceable replacements for the usual bar-rock accoutrement. Whether in run-down New Orleans, Houston or anonymous Oaxaca, the obviously non-actor audiences seem to like them just fine. The comedy is loose and goofy, seemingly barely written more than five minutes before every shot.
The competence of the 1989 band curdles into the output of the world's "worst band," as the title cards of 1994's slouchy
Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses announce. A band that could rip out surf-guitar solos and biker staples with equal competence has grown to include tacky Soviet pop and other specialized genres?which are funnier to watch fail in front of crowds than they are to enjoy on their own. The boys now have heavy Mexican accents, and the jokes are of the leaden broad-accent/bad-English variety ("You are coward"). Other jokes flatly reveal predictable hypocrisies: Vladimir, now a self-styled religious prophet, declines the offer of a gig: "We are in a hurry, and besides,? only to shut up at the sight of money slapped down on a table. "Vhen do we start?"
Even when irritating,
Meet Moses is nonetheless prescient in touring Europe from west to east, a continent drawn rejoined in the middle without ideological reconciliation. When the Cowboys pop up in a
Paris bingo hall to inappropriately serenade the elderly with Soviet schlock between number calling, their audience is deathly silent, polite but unreceptive. Such chilly meetings between previously irreconcilable political neighbors will become more common: an emblematic scene has Vladimir reading from the Old Testament while a heretic trades quotes with him from
The Communist Manifesto on the other side, an ice-cream-eating indifferent positioned between them. (He dismisses both as jingoists and walks off.)
A mostly flat burlesque on the decline of Communism,
Moses anticipates more substantive, far-off endeavors like
Ulrich Seidl's 2007 Austria-vs.-Ukraine
Import/Export [ed: our Seidl interview
here], which spends 135 minutes investigating the two countries' invisible economic ties, or the more superficially modest films of
Mia Hansen-L�ve, whose dramas unfold over a minimum of two countries each. The Cowboys wander through strange lands soon to be a lot closer than anyone will be comfortable with, anticipating greatly fluidity in constructing a "European" identity.
For a shorter, punchier and genuinely subversive meditation on the end of the Soviet Union, turn to the
Total Balalaika Show, an alternately wearying and mind-blowing concert movie, which begins with nothing less than a glowering portrait of Lenin before proceeding to essentially straightforward performance footage. Rumbling choral back-up from dozens of deep-voiced men comes courtesy of the Alexandrov Ensemble (a/k/a the Red Army Choir), in existence since 1928 and smoothly transitioning from the Cold War to a post-Soviet era by singing the "Volga Boatman" song behind a group of no-larger-than-life dudes with foot-long awnings of hair over their faces.
The highlight is a rendition of
"Happy Together," with a Finnish cowboy and a real Russian military singer transforming a duet about generic romantic love into a metaphor for East and West's reconciliation. Kaurism�ki routinely returns to the rows and rows of trumpet players behind the Cowboys waiting for their cue, their skills now applied to knowing kitsch for a gleeful hometown crowd?an uneasy but hilarious image of change. As for the Leningrad Cowboys, they've outlasted Kaurismaki?s conception: this year, they released a new album entitled
Buena Vodka Social Club. Some jokes never get old.
Posted by ahillis at October 18, 2011 12:09 PM
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