Universal Language (Rankin, 2024)

Written by Giorgia Cattaneo

Winter. Somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg. Anytime between the 1980s and the 2020s. As snow keeps on falling down and people keep on leading normal lives, the world around them is stuck in a time-line that doesn’t really exist, when past and future seem to collide. The Earth, too, looks like it has been ripped out of the space and crumpled up to the point that Canada and Iran are now silently lying, one on top of each other.

It is no coincidence that everything, from the adopted colour palette to the way the characters are dressed, immediately brings us back to the Eighties: the so-called “decade of decadence”, the postmodern era, the final step to the rise of capitalism, when the focus of society shifts from manufacturing to finance and consumerism, ready to translate into politics of power and excess. The world has turned upside down: in Teheran people speak English or French and drink maple syrup, while in the meantime in Winnipeg Farsi is the language that is taught at school, and in bars they only serve Persian tea. In Teheran, Matthew (Matthew Rankin himself) leaves his job at the Québec government and embarks on a mysterious journey to visit a mother he never knew; at the same time in Winnipeg, Massoud (Pirouz Rankin) guides a group of tourists on a walking tour of the city’s historic sites, including an empty shopping mall and a bench, where an abandoned suitcase awaits an owner that will never come. On one side the desperate research of a never owned identity, on the other the image of a vacant society with no background history left.

But the point of Rankin’s movie is not really to show us two different and separate dimensions, instead to bring them so close they seem – and, in fact, are – the same. There’s no “me and you”, but only one big, lonely “everything” – perhaps a depiction of humanity in its most extensive meaning: so Iran is Canada, Matthew is Massoud (we properly see them exchanging roles by the end of the movie), and so it is the other way around.

Postmodernity, by definition, has a beginning but no end. That’s why we find ourselves, exactly like the characters, still stuck in this time-line, in a now fully globalized world, with nowhere else to go, and where we all are led to a feeling of extreme loneliness while sharing the same fate: here is where the incredible contemporaneity of Universal Language lies. The movie lends to various and personal interpretations – and it’s most-likely autobiographical too, as shown by the director’s choice to base one of the two main characters on himself –, while also putting a reflector on the main reality we all constantly deal with, and making the audience reflect on important historical and philosophical themes.

There are two scenes in particular that, in my opinion, well encapsulate the beating heart of the movie: one, the scene where two kids, Negin (Rojina Esmaeili) and Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi), find a paper bill frozen deep in the sidewalk ice, and whose purpose in the story only revolves around the desperate attempt to pull it out of there; second, the sign hanging inside Winnipeg’s shopping mall stating that a strong economy helps people feeling less lonely. The materialisation of the dematerialised, which suggests a strong feeling of detachment from what is human and what is not.The movie also boasts of a unique visual identity, thanks to Rankin’s selection of vivid colours, symmetrical compositions and meticulously studied designs, alongside with a quirky, almost theatrical way of story-telling, with many moments of humour – all elements that clearly denotes inspiration to world-renowned Wes Anderson’s works.

A sharp, yet delicate piece of work, that is capable to deal with universal languages and themes without ever resulting obvious, nor repetitive. A postmodern narration made through images, that powerfully transcends postmodernity itself by maybe opening the doors to a new wave of Surrealist cinema with a strong symbolic subtext. Something you shouldn’t miss while it’s out in theatres, for sure.