Matthew Rankin’s absurdist comedy is one of the most original films in recent memory to deal with displacement and migration.
Universal Language (Une langue universelle, 2024), one of 2024’s best-reviewed festival films and winner of the FIPRESCI Prize at the 62nd Viennale, is Matthew Rankin’s follow-up to his first feature film The Twentieth Century (2019) and a series of earlier short films. Rankin’s films are often compared to David Lynch and fellow Winnipegian Guy Maddin, but there is something unique about them as well. Rankin often references significant moments from Canadian history, yet without being interested in accurately depicting events as they happened.
Alternative historicity instead becomes absurd and humorous. For example, The Twentieth Century featured a weird competition to determine the 1899 Canadian Prime Minister. Rankin’s short film Tabula Rasa (2012) was a surreal take on the 1950 Red River flood, while Mynarski Death Plummet (2014) blended live action and animation to tell the final moments of Winnipeg’s World War II hero Andrew Mynarski. However, one short in particular, Self-Portrait: M. Rankin (Sharhé-Halé Shakhsi: M. Rankin, 2008) is a clear precursor to Universal Language. In this 3-minute short, Rankin plays both himself, and an impostor obsessed with Rankin’s films who goes around introducing himself as the filmmaker. It is obviously an homage to Abbas Kiarostami’s masterpiece Close-up (Nema-ye nazdik, 1990), but Rankin goes further with this playful idea. Even though the film is set in Winnipeg, all characters talk in Farsi, because that is the official language.
16 years later, Rankin took this little joke and created a feature film around it that is brimming with fresh ideas and humour. Once again, the story is set in a reimagined Winnipeg that looks like Tehran, and the official language is Farsi. Scenes like children in a classroom on a snowy winter’s day, two girls trying to help their classmate by fishing a banknote out of the ice and a sequence of men having a long conversation while driving in a car are reminiscent of Iranian cinema. And then there is the story involving Rankin himself as a character and a double taking his place. The filmmaker deliberately confuses us with geographical and cultural references and does not follow a chronological timeline either. While we lose our sense of time and space, Universal Language becomes one of the most inventive films in recent memory to deal with themes of displacement and migration.
We are accustomed to Iranian films beginning with the phrase “In the name of Allah”. Rankin’s film, co-written by Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, starts with the dedication “In the name of friendship.” When this absurdist comedy set in an alternative universe between Winnipeg and Tehran is over, we are left with a sense of bonding and friendship that is deeply humane.
Engin Ertan
Edited by Birgit Beumers
© FIPRESCI 2024