“Leningrad Cowboys Go America” (1989) / “Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses” (1994) / “Total Balalaika Show” (1994) [all dir: Aki Kaurismäki]

Although they had starred in two feature films and a concert film in their native Finland by this time, I found out about the Leningrad Cowboys in the same way as many others my age did… through their showstopping rendition of “Sweet Home Alabama” at the 1994 MTV Video Music Awards.

As you can imagine, this left an impression on me. A couple of years later, the Blockbuster Video that stood near 6th & South Street was closing up and selling off their stock. As I was combing the racks, I came across “Leningrad Cowboys Go America”. I immediately recognized their mile-long pompadours and pointy toe shoes poking up while lying on their backs on a cold deserted beach. It seemed like a decent blind purchase. Glad I did.

Watching it initially I was struck by the deadpan humor that ran through it, as you can see from the clip below. It wasn’t a surprise then to see Jim Jarmusch cameo as a used car salesman in New York. It’s definitely his strain of humor and filmmaking.

The Cowboys themselves can be seen as a single character in these films. You only get one or two of their names in passing. The only characters that stand apart are their tyrannical manager Vladimir and the nameless village idiot who follows them across the globe. The film is essentially a road movie and the important things are the locations and the situations the group finds themselves in.

Anyways, that VHS I had initially picked up got lost over many moves over the years. It was only later that I found out about the sequel and concert film. I didn’t watch them until I bought the full set that The Criterion Collection released as part of their Eclipse series.

In “Leningrad Cowboys Meet Moses”, it’s a few years later and the Cowboys are stranded in Mexico, out of work after falling victim to alcohol and aimless without Vladimir keeping them in line. They now have long mustaches to go with their hair and shoes. They receive a mysterious telegram telling them to go back to New York for a gig.

It turns out that the telegram was from Vladimir, who has found religion over those years and now goes by Moses. He tells them that they are now on a mission from God to return home. He sends them on a circuitous route back, followed all the while by a CIA agent. The agent is on the trail of Moses and the monumental item he stole while still stateside. I’m not giving away what he took, but it’s something quite hard to miss.

It’s another road movie, this time traveling across Europe. The same deadpan humor weaves throughout it, even in parts which hint that Moses may actually be divinely inspired. It also touches on the fall of the Soviet Union, as the Cowboys meet their brothers who had been in the Russian army. There’s a scene where one of the Russian Army Cowboys is reading Karl Marx aloud while Moses reads from the Bible. None of the quotes seem to relate to each other.

“Total Balalaika Show” is an hour long concert film of a show the Cowboys did with the Red Army Choir (that’s them in the “Sweet Home Alabama” clip) in front of 70,000 fans in their home base of Helsinki. It’s a pretty standard concert film visually. The music ranges from pop to cabaret to classical. The staid nature of the Russian choir plays off the rock star posing of the Leningrad Cowboys. The DVD of the show includes a number of videos for the band that were all directed by Aki Kaurismäki.

All of these are hangout films. You’re not too invested in any overarching story. You’re following along with them, seeing how they interact with the world around them and how they appear to outsiders. Nothing too heady; just chill out and go along for the ride.