Leningrad Cowboys Go America

Aki Kaurismäki's Leningrad Cowboys Go America (1989) is the cult deadpan comedy that introduced the world to the Finnish director's most absurd creation — a fictional band whose ludicrous hairstyles and shoes became an enduring visual gag and even spawned real-life concerts, including a famous collaboration with the Red Army Choir.

The slender plot follows the hapless group, managed by a tyrannical huckster, as they cross America in search of an audience for music nobody wants, dragging a coffin and adapting their repertoire to each bar's taste. Kaurismäki shoots the journey as a series of static, mournfully funny tableaux, his characters' frozen expressions and the bleak American roadside generating a uniquely melancholic comedy. Matti Pellonpää and the regular Kaurismäki troupe play it with magnificent po-faced commitment.

An international cult hit, it cemented Kaurismäki's reputation abroad and turned the Leningrad Cowboys into a genuine touring phenomenon, the rare case of a fictional band escaping its film. Drily hilarious and quietly forlorn, Leningrad Cowboys Go America is the perfect introduction to the director's sensibility — a road movie about failure, performed with such deadpan conviction that it becomes, improbably, both very funny and oddly moving. Kaurismäki later reunited the band for sequels and live spectacles, but this remains the original and best — the deadpan road movie that turned a joke about a terrible band into an enduring cult phenomenon.