February 19, 2025
FILM: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
DIRECTED BY: MATTHEW RANKIN
STARRING: MATTHEW RANKIN, PIROUZ NEMATI, AMIR AMIRI
RATING: 3 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
I’ve always been a big fan of Iranian cinema, even doing my Master’s thesis on the influence of Italian and U.S cinema on the country’s films. Canada’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature Oscar is a wonderful homage to some of these country’s films while also being a purely original Canadian production. Co-written, directed, and starring Matthew Rankin, Universal Language is one of the most captivating films of the past year (I had it at number two on my Top Ten list of 2024) that begs for us to even try to summarize and understand.
It begins with a long shot of a school wall where we see children acting rather out of control. Clearly, there is no teacher in the room until we see a man walk his way up the steps and eventually make his way into the classroom. At this point, there are no cuts just a visual transition from a distance of the late arriving teaching beginning to scold his students. Once inside what we see is reminiscent of some of the great Iranian films by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Majid Majidi. These filmmakers began their careers illustrating the lives of school children in the country who were often reprimanded quite harshly by their strict teachers. But while the children in Universal Language are Persian, they are also richly Canadian. Their school is co-ed and they learn French. They also have big plans for their future. While one says she wants to be diplomat, another student, with glasses, a fake moustache, and dark eyebrows has a goal of being a comedian like Groucho Marx. Being interviewed about their plans comes across a bit like the scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall when his character Alvy is able to ask his childhood classmates what they are up to today. The children in Universal Language represent a whole other breed of young Persians living and learning in the cold winter of Winnepeg, Canada.
These early scenes also set up the often quite witty and hilarious tone of much of the film. Rankin echoes some of the tropes he’s seen in Iranian cinema, such as children running and helping each other out in a very constricting town with walls everywhere. When trying to find the glasses that a schoolmate lost due to a loose turkey (!), two of the children try to seek help from townspeople only to be told that they need to go where the beige buildings are. Of course, everything is beige adding an absurdity to their entire quest.
These characters represent only a third of the stories being followed throughout the film. There’s a man, played by Rankin, who quits his job while another man sits in a nearby cubicle bawling for unknown reasons that have seemingly nothing to do with Rankin’s character. Then there’s a freelance tour guide who takes people around to the few tourist sites he believes there are in Winnipeg, such as a bench with a briefcase that has been sitting there for possibly decades and a memorial to the father of Manitoba which is situated in a small grassy area between lanes of a major highway.
The list of absurd situations like these goes on and on for a good portion of the film. It’s really quite funny if you can deal with a certain lack of logic. Even the timeline is a bit out of chronological order adding even more confusion and surrealistic situations. Then, of course, there is that turkey on the loose riding on a bus…
However, this isn’t a film with just some belly laugh series of images. There’s actually a darker tone that settles in during the latter portions of the narrative. The film is ultimately exploring how the various storylines come together in different ways suggesting that as cold and isolated as it might appear these people are to each other, they are all connected in some way and they all need each other and perhaps a bit of a sense of humor to get by.
I can’t wait to see this film again to discover many of the elements I might have missed the first time around. It’s a truly unusual and revealing Canadian story from a talent that is deservedly beginning to gain international attention.
Universal Language played at the Chicago International Film Festival. It opens this week in select theaters including the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago.
FILM: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
DIRECTED BY: MATTHEW RANKIN
STARRING: MATTHEW RANKIN, PIROUZ NEMATI, AMIR AMIRI
RATING: 3 ½ out of 4 stars
By Dan Pal
I’ve always been a big fan of Iranian cinema, even doing my Master’s thesis on the influence of Italian and U.S cinema on the country’s films. Canada’s submission for this year’s Best International Feature Oscar is a wonderful homage to some of these country’s films while also being a purely original Canadian production. Co-written, directed, and starring Matthew Rankin, Universal Language is one of the most captivating films of the past year (I had it at number two on my Top Ten list of 2024) that begs for us to even try to summarize and understand.
It begins with a long shot of a school wall where we see children acting rather out of control. Clearly, there is no teacher in the room until we see a man walk his way up the steps and eventually make his way into the classroom. At this point, there are no cuts just a visual transition from a distance of the late arriving teaching beginning to scold his students. Once inside what we see is reminiscent of some of the great Iranian films by directors such as Abbas Kiarostami and Majid Majidi. These filmmakers began their careers illustrating the lives of school children in the country who were often reprimanded quite harshly by their strict teachers. But while the children in Universal Language are Persian, they are also richly Canadian. Their school is co-ed and they learn French. They also have big plans for their future. While one says she wants to be diplomat, another student, with glasses, a fake moustache, and dark eyebrows has a goal of being a comedian like Groucho Marx. Being interviewed about their plans comes across a bit like the scene in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall when his character Alvy is able to ask his childhood classmates what they are up to today. The children in Universal Language represent a whole other breed of young Persians living and learning in the cold winter of Winnepeg, Canada.
These early scenes also set up the often quite witty and hilarious tone of much of the film. Rankin echoes some of the tropes he’s seen in Iranian cinema, such as children running and helping each other out in a very constricting town with walls everywhere. When trying to find the glasses that a schoolmate lost due to a loose turkey (!), two of the children try to seek help from townspeople only to be told that they need to go where the beige buildings are. Of course, everything is beige adding an absurdity to their entire quest.
These characters represent only a third of the stories being followed throughout the film. There’s a man, played by Rankin, who quits his job while another man sits in a nearby cubicle bawling for unknown reasons that have seemingly nothing to do with Rankin’s character. Then there’s a freelance tour guide who takes people around to the few tourist sites he believes there are in Winnipeg, such as a bench with a briefcase that has been sitting there for possibly decades and a memorial to the father of Manitoba which is situated in a small grassy area between lanes of a major highway.
The list of absurd situations like these goes on and on for a good portion of the film. It’s really quite funny if you can deal with a certain lack of logic. Even the timeline is a bit out of chronological order adding even more confusion and surrealistic situations. Then, of course, there is that turkey on the loose riding on a bus…
However, this isn’t a film with just some belly laugh series of images. There’s actually a darker tone that settles in during the latter portions of the narrative. The film is ultimately exploring how the various storylines come together in different ways suggesting that as cold and isolated as it might appear these people are to each other, they are all connected in some way and they all need each other and perhaps a bit of a sense of humor to get by.
I can’t wait to see this film again to discover many of the elements I might have missed the first time around. It’s a truly unusual and revealing Canadian story from a talent that is deservedly beginning to gain international attention.
Universal Language played at the Chicago International Film Festival. It opens this week in select theaters including the Gene Siskel Center in Chicago.