29 March,2025 01:16 PM IST | Mumbai | Johnson Thomas
Still from the film
In Universal Language, an absurdist triptych of seemingly unconnected stories finds a mysterious point of intersection. Director Matthew Rankin and his co-screenwriters-producers Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati construct a collaboratively imagined city. For a dreamy ninety minutes, the mind can blur away the distances and experience the magical artifice of a space set somewhere between Winnipeg and Tehran.
A snowy day in Winnipeg, a school viewed from the outside. Through one of the windows we see a disruptive class shouting loud in Farsi. A man arrives carrying 2 suitcases and enters the classroom. He is obviously disappointed by their behavior. He addresses the class - Can't they at least fool around in French?
While walking home through a snowy maze one student, Negin (Rojina Esmaeili), and her older sister, Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi), find money encrusted in ice. Another thread follows a Winnipeg tour guide, Massoud (Nemati), pointing out, to tourists, a bench and the iconic unattended briefcase preserved atop it which is supposedly a UNESCO heritage site; A third plot tracks a deadened Montréal bureaucrat named Matthew Rankin (the director himself) as he returns home to see his bedridden mother.
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In the absurdists reality presented here you see turkeys wandering the streets and occupying bus seats, a woman who complains to the driver that she's suffered too much in life to have to sit next to poultry, a crooning turkey-store proprietor, a "lacrimologist" who hands out tissues at a funeral for a cat, a man alone in a neglected mall.
Universal Language exists in an alternative world where Farsi and French are the main languages. The film basically tells different people's stories. We first find Matthew in a government office in Montreal, where the only other worker is a man weeping in his cubicle. Matthew gives up his job and catches a bus back to his hometown, Winnipeg. When he tells a fellow passenger where he is going, they tell him "Winnipeg is a strange destination for tourists".
Universal Language is not easy to read. It makes you think in several different trajectories. As per Rankin "Its an expression of . . . idealistic longing in a binary, rigid age." There's a mournful tone swamping Universal Language. The film tries to reject the idea of nationhood, and reroute its ideas towards pluralistic universalism. Universal Language's dense and unexplained context makes it a difficult watch. But it's lyricism keeps you enchanted in this world that goes beyond words and standard images. This film was previewed as part of the Red Lorryfilm festival package
