Why Leningrad Cow­boys Go Amer­i­ca remains a clas­sic music biopic

With the recent glut of music biopics, it’s hard not to yearn for a time when the con­flu­ence of music and film tru­ly met sub­jects on their own terms. Aki Kaurismäki’s road movie Leningrad Cow­boys Go Amer­ica, which turned 30 this year, proves that the life of a tour­ing musi­cian (a Siber­ian pol­ka group traips­ing through the Deep South, no less) is slap­dash and poten­tial­ly haz­ardous, but finds strength in these moments, which feel infi­nite­ly more truth­ful than a ham-fist­ed, box-check­ing com­pre­hen­sive history.

The film sees a reverse-engi­neer­ing of con­ven­tion­al biopic tropes. The Leningrad Cow­boys were born from Finnish band the Sleepy Sleep­ers, and their satir­i­cal vision was brought to fruition through col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Finnish direc­tor. A point­ed gag aimed square­ly at the USSR, their high water mark came with Kaurismäki’s film, book­end­ed by a few music videos, a sequel and a spec­tac­u­lar, Fin­land-Rus­sia uni­fy­ing con­cert. This isn’t an ori­gin sto­ry or an end­point but rather a fic­tion­al snap­shot that man­ages to con­tex­tu­alise the group’s absurd styling (all mem­bers wear match­ing, impos­si­bly pro­trud­ing pom­padours and pointy elf shoes) and unde­ni­able musi­cal chops.

Quirky but nev­er trite, occa­sion­al­ly bleak but still light on its feet, the film eschews a straight­for­ward biopic approach while still hit­ting some famil­iar estab­lish­ing marks: the group can’t seem to make ends meet in their own coun­try, so their syco­phan­tic man­ag­er Vlad­mir (Mat­ti Pelonopia) book them on a tour of the US, to be capped off with a wed­ding par­ty in Mex­i­co. Though things get under­way at the famous CBGB in New York City, the major­i­ty of the dive bars and bik­er hang­outs they play are locat­ed in towns with rich rock ​’n’ roll his­to­ry (a term the Cow­boys are ini­tial­ly unfa­mil­iar with), from Mem­phis to New Orleans.

The band’s approach to rock music is ini­tial­ly dis­ori­en­tat­ing; rhythm and blues inflect­ed with eupho­ni­ums and accor­dions. How­ev­er, their sound bends itself into some­thing unde­ni­ably catchy, run­ning the gamut from out­law coun­try to Detroit Rawk. Regard­less of the lev­el of arti­fice pre­sent­ed, it remains thrilling to watch the Cow­boys inter­pret the Amer­i­can song­book in the back­wards way they do, espe­cial­ly when the audi­ence is won over.

It’s in these pas­sages that Kau­ris­mä­ki most suc­cess­ful­ly evokes the pow­er of live music. Films like Bohemi­an Rhap­sody and Rock­et­man treat their sub­jects’ fans like adden­dums, crude­ly tacked on to fill out a sta­di­um, aside from the odd heck­ler. In the dingy local spots the Cow­boys throw down in, Kau­ris­mä­ki cap­tures won­der­ful moments of sym­bio­sis which, despite their fic­tion­al basis, seem to show the band and audi­ence play­ing off one anoth­er. The New Orleans scenes are as joy­ous and warm as any of Les Blank’s musi­cal com­mu­ni­ty por­traits, name­ly Always for Plea­sure or Chu­las Fron­teras.

Leningrad Cow­boys Go Amer­i­ca might not be the most coher­ent­ly assem­bled film – inter­ti­tles push much of the action for­ward, even end­ing with ​‘Shit Hap­pens’ – but the Cow­boys’ mythos is ampli­fied through­out. If any­thing, this appro­pri­ate­ly cedes the floor to the songs, and thus even sug­gests a musi­cal life beyond the film.