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.
Still from the film
Film: Universal Language
Cast: Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, Amir Amiri
Director: Matthew Rankin
Rating: 3.5/5
Runtime: 89 min
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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.
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
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