There’s a scene partway through Matthew Rankin’s Universal Language that is a triumph of visual filmmaking. One of the protagonists, Matthew (aka Matheiu), played by the director himself, is arranging to leave his job and the province/Nation of Québec to return to his native Winnipeg. He sits down with a torpid yet fast-talking bureaucrat, his French-Canadian drawl so thick it could be used as a sauce atop fries and cheese curds to make poutine. As the camera switches places on a 180-degree axis — a cutting style common in many films — the audience’s viewpoint shifts… yet it doesn’t. We experience a radical change of perspective; things like desks and weeping co-workers jump quickly from side to side, yet everything else, from the photo on the wall to a flaccid flag, remains steadfastly the same. It’s a jarring experience, a visual kink that’s at once deeply unsettling, but also, more importantly, incredibly hilarious.
This is but one way that Rankin’s film encourages viewers to dig deeper and consider the nature of perspective, challenging expectations while also being comforted by the commonplace. It’s this universality that gives the film its English title (Une Langue Universelle in French), but equally the political, social, and even moral ways in which language in this country has been used as both a community builder and a weapon. The film has already generated plenty of attention, winning the top prize when it screened as part of Cannes’ Director’s Fortnight selection, and despite its offbeat nature has been chosen to represent Canada’s official Oscar entry for Best International Feature Film.
What Is ‘Universal Language’ About?
Told through interweaving tales that evoke Iranian art films, Wes Anderson’s puzzle-box-like creations, and some of the trademark ennui from the likes of Soviet directors like Tarkovsky, there’s a lot stylistically to unpack from this wild and crazy film. Along with Rankin playing a version of himself, he’s joined by an extraordinary ensemble of child and adult actors alike, including Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousef, Sobhan Javadi, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou, and Danielle Fichaud. The city is divided into sectors named for the muted and banal coloration of the buildings, as turkeys roam the snowy spaces, terrorizing some of the locals with their incessant gobbling, and arousing others with their charismatic charms. This isn’t quite operating at the level of a metaverse story, so common these days in art films and comic book blockbusters alike. Instead, it resembles Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, a place that’s real yet fictional simultaneously, switching back and forth with some things moving, and others staying still.
Rankin’s vision for his Winnipeg is one where Iranian Persian is the common tongue, and French immersion classes are reluctantly attended by rowdy youngsters. We meet a Groucho Marx-faced child disrupting a classroom while a teacher loses whatever grip he had previously on his sanity, and we also meet purveyors of Kleenex tissues who also serve as tear-collecting lacrimologists. There’s a Tim Horton’s-branded Persian tea room filled with winter clothing-festooned locals. A hapless part-time tour guide traipses through the snow to celebrate the beautiful banality of the environs. In a parking garage two friends grab some tea and soft-serve, and as one wistfully points out that in the past “Winnipeg was a very romantic place,” we almost believe it.
Rankin has quickly joined the ranks of the finest of the growing contingent of independent Winnipeg filmmakers, taking the lead from Guy Maddin’s (My Winnipeg) wild experimentation and crafting delightfully odd films. Now based in Montreal, his storyline about coming home has plenty of autobiographical elements baked in, from tombstones commemorating the 2017 death of Laird Forbes Rankin (“beloved father, author and administrator”), to simply the cultural navigation between these various spaces that leave him, and us, in a state of incertitude.
Matthew Rankin Brilliantly Crafts a Taste of the Bizarre
Everything in this Winnipeg is slightly off, yet from specific details like the growing height of a child marked on a door frame to the gentle dunking of a sugar cube into the hot drink, then placing it into the mouth before sipping the otherwise slightly bitter brew, we’re treated to beautifully specific instances of astonishing normality. So, while we see furniture ads allude to the Xenophobic narrowmindedness of a “Québec for Québecers” mantra, we also see a trio of women of diverse backgrounds quietly knitting while being warmed at the Tim Horton’s, literally threading disparate elements together to craft a whole. While much of our tour through the city is comically absurd, there’s something pure in stopping on the island between traffic heading anywhere but where one is standing and taking a moment of quiet.
The cinematography by Isabelle Stachtchenko is stellar, capturing the oblique angles, monochromatic mundanity, and bemittened, chilly citizens of this Winnipeg as they journey from district to district. The banal is framed in ways that almost achieve the epic. From a bravura camera sweep that reframes a red car to the simple ascending of an enclosed staircase, there are images here that enthrall despite their almost oppressive normalcy. The production design by Louisa Schabas is equally exquisite, with the detailed environs encouraging immediate re-watch.
The script written by Rankin along with Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati manages to dance between being scattershot and coherent, which is no small feat. Even when the film indulges in more esoteric sweeps by the end, it’s all done in ways that are never gratuitous or bizarre for the sake of being bizarre. The most surreal moments are about making audiences feel the pull between the idea of home and the actuality of being back, meaning that even the most odd moments play a significant narrative role, rather than just sprinkled in for the sake of disjointedness. Produced by Sylvain Corbeil, the filmmaker behind international successes from the likes of Xavier Dolan, Anne Émond, Maxime Giroux, and Denis Côté, the collaborative production itself exemplifies this blend of what the mosaic-like nature of Canadian culture aspires to, with a dash of Quebecois cinema, Winnipegger oddness, and a deep understanding of Persian storytelling transplanted to the dull environs of Rankin’s hometown.
The Film Gets Playful With the Persian Language
The film appears to have come out of homophonic wordplay. The currency of Iran for centuries has been the rial, while in Rankin’s Manitoba, it’s a bill named after Louis Riel. For those unaware of the vagaries of Western Canadian history, Riel was the 19th-century politician and leader, the founder of the province, a legendary voice for his Métis culture, and a martyr for his cause, having been executed by a National government for his role in the Red River rebellion. Thus, a rial becomes the Riel, yet another seeming shift that doesn’t change anything at all. The film’s title screen claims to be a presentation of “the Winnipeg Institute for the Intellectual Development of Young People,” but there’s little overly didactic here to warrant such an origin. The Persian title for the film, آواز بوقلمون, translates as “Song of the Turkey,” evoking a kind of ballad for the lives we see become intertwined even as we are processed for conformity and societal consumption. It’s this song of our lives – sometimes discordant, sometimes finding pleasing harmonic rhymes – that follows through these various vignettes.
‘Universal Language’ Dives Deep into Canada’s Dream of a Multicultural Paradise
In Rankin’s vision of his hometown, we see hand-painted posters of smiling politicians at an abandoned mall alliteratively dubbed Portage Place, its clock missing its hands, evoking the timelessness of the locale. A smiling politician Brian Mulroney shakes with a grinning Justin Trudeau, their conservative and liberal terms served decades apart in our common timeline, but their legacies overtly grasping fraternally in this one. There’s even a small bird illustrated as being nestled on the shoulder of Trudeau, looking somewhat bemused to be witnessing the moment. This is a film toying with the subtle fascism that rises as the antithesis of dreams of multicultural harmony, for Canadians specifically, and the world as a whole. The story navigates the fine line between community pride and nationalistic zeal, providing lessons for a future while admitting to the existential futility of it all. We can shift our perspective, but every time we do, things stay pretty much the same.
Universal Language had its North American premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival.
