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Arab Times
17-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Arab Times
‘Universal Language' merges 2 worlds
It's not unusual for a city to double for another metropolis in movies. New Yorkers have long been able to spot when Toronto has been substituted for the Big Apple. Matthew Rankin, though, has gone more than a step, or maybe 85 steps, further. His 'Universal Language' takes place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but the culture is entirely Iranian. Farsi is the spoken tongue. At Tim Hortons, tea is served from samovars. It's as if we've been knocked over the head and woken up in some snowy, Canadian version of an Abbas Kiarostami film. And in Rankin's surreal and enchantingly discombobulating film, that's more or less the case. No reason is ever stated for the strange, deadpan fusion of Winnipeg reality and Iranian New Wave cinema. But there's that title. If cinema is a universal language, it's never been more elastically employed, bridging worlds 6,000 miles apart for a singular kind of movie dream, like what Rankin might have spun in his head while drifting off to sleep on a Manitoba winter night while Kiarostami's 'Where Is the Friend's House?' played on TV. It's both an extremely exact homage to the films of Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and other Iranian masters, and a comic lament for how distant their movies might feel for a Winnipegian director. Rankin has joked that 'Universal Language' brings together the rich poetry of Iranian filmmaking and a Canadian cinema that emerged 'out of 50 years of discount furniture commercials.' The gags start immediately, with an opening title logo for 'A Presentation of the Winnipeg Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young People' - a twist on the Iranian institute that produced '70s classics, like Kiarostami's Koker trilogy. Like those films, Rankin's is framed with kids. In the first scene, a displeased French teacher (Mani Soleymanlou) chastises his young students for speaking Persian. One child, an aspiring comedian, is dressed as Groucho Marx. Another says a turkey stole his glasses. Another wants to be a Winnipeg tour guide. The teacher asks them all to read from their book. In unison they read: 'We are lost forever in this world.' 'Universal Language,' scripted by Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, lightly juggles a handful of characters we intermittently check in with. That includes an adult tour guide (Pirouz Nemati), whose attractions include the site of 'the Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958.' There are also two girls (Rojina Esmaeili and Saba Vahedyousefi) who find a banknote frozen in ice. A character named Matthew Rankin (played by Rankin) is traveling to Winnipeg by bus to visit his ailing mother after departing his bureaucratic job in Montreal. Oh, and there are turkeys. Lots and lots of turkeys. Rankin's film, his second following the also surreal 'Twentieth Century' (2019), is propelled less by narrative thrust than the abiding oddity of its basic construction, and the movie's slavish devotion to seeing it through without a wink. As the movie moves along in formally composed shots, something wistful takes shape about the possibilities of connection and of insurmountable distances. I've twice now seen 'Universal Language,' a prize-winner in Cannes' Directors Fortnight last year that was shortlisted for the best international Oscar, and I still barely believe it exists. Rankin's movie, in melding two worlds, risks taking place in neither, of letting its cinephile concept snuff out anything authentic. But while I'm not, at the moment, begging for a subsequent French New Wave movie set in Saskatchewan, I've not gone long without thinking about 'Universal Language.' I guess Rankin's movie dream has filtered into those of my own. 'Universal Language,' an Oscilloscope Laboratories. release, is not rated by the Motion Picture Association. In Farsi and French. Running time: 89 minutes. Three and a half stars out of four. ( By Jake Coyle - AP)
Associated Press
14-02-2025
- Entertainment
- Associated Press
Movie Review: ‘Universal Language' needs to be seen to be believed
It's not unusual for a city to double for another metropolis in movies. New Yorkers have long been able to spot when Toronto has been substituted for the Big Apple. Matthew Rankin, though, has gone more than a step, or maybe 85 steps, further. His 'Universal Language' takes place in Winnipeg, Manitoba, but the culture is entirely Iranian. Farsi is the spoken tongue. At Tim Hortons, tea is served from samovars. It's as if we've been knocked over the head and woken up in some snowy, Canadian version of an Abbas Kiarostami film. And in Rankin's surreal and enchantingly discombobulating film, that's more or less the case. No reason is ever stated for the strange, deadpan fusion of Winnipeg reality and Iranian New Wave cinema. But there's that title. If cinema is a universal language, it's never been more elastically employed, bridging worlds 6,000 miles apart for a singular kind of movie dream. It's both an extremely exact homage to the films of Kiarostami, Jafar Panahi and other Iranian masters, and a comic lament for how distant their movies might feel for a Winnipegian director. Rankin has joked that 'Universal Language' brings together the rich poetry of Iranian filmmaking and a Canadian cinema that emerged 'out of 50 years of discount furniture commercials.' The gags start immediately, with an opening title logo for 'A Presentation of the Winnipeg Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young People' — a twist on the Iranian institute that produced '70s classics, like Kiarostami's Koker trilogy. Like those films, Rankin's is framed with kids. In the first scene, a displeased French teacher (Mani Soleymanlou) chastises his young students for speaking Persian. One child, an aspiring comedian. is dressed as Groucho Marx. Another says a turkey stole his glasses. Another wants to be a Winnipeg tour guide. The teacher asks them all to read from their book. In unison they read: 'We are lost forever in this world.' 'Universal Language,' scripted by Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, lightly juggles a handful of characters we intermittently check in with. That includes an adult tour guide (Pirouz Nemati), whose attractions include the site of 'the Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958.' There are also two girls (Rojina Esmaeili and Saba Vahedyousefi) who find a banknote frozen in ice. A character named Matthew Rankin (played by Rankin) is traveling to Winnipeg by bus to visit his ailing mother after departing his bureaucratic job in Montreal. Oh, and there are turkeys. Lots and lots of turkeys. Rankin's film, his second following the also surreal 'Twentieth Century' (2019), is propelled less by narrative thrust than the abiding oddity of its basic construction, and the movie's slavish devotion to seeing it through without a wink. As the movie moves along in formally composed shots, something wistful takes shape about the possibilities of connection and of insurmountable distances. I've twice now seen 'Universal Language,' a prize-winner in Cannes' Directors Fortnight last year that was shortlisted for the best international Oscar, and I still barely believe it exists. Rankin's movie, in melding two worlds, risks taking place in neither, of letting its cinephile concept snuff out anything authentic. But while I'm not, at the moment, begging for a subsequent French New Wave movie set in Saskatchewan, I've not gone long without thinking about 'Universal Language.' I guess Rankin's movie dream has filtered into those of my own.
New York Times
13-02-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
‘Universal Language' Review: If Tehran Were Winnipeg
The jokes I most enjoy are very specific, aimed at some tiny cross section of people who possess a peculiar shared set of reference points. Sure, broadly crowd-pleasing comedy is a hoot. But when you sense something is funny because it was made for you, and so there are other people like you, too — that's one of the best feelings art can provoke. 'Universal Language,' directed by Matthew Rankin, is a gently funny, gently moving, slightly surrealist little comedy that's aimed at two groups of people: Canadians, specifically but not exclusively those who know Winnipeg, and aficionados of Iranian cinema. Surely there's overlap between the two circles in that Venn diagram, but I can't imagine it's all that substantial. Combining the two cultural specificities, though, makes for something fresh and weird and delightful to watch — even if, like me, you're not an expert on either one. Even before the movie begins, onscreen text proclaims that this is 'A Presentation of the Winnipeg Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young People.' No such agency exists: It's a sly wink at cinephiles, who may know that a similar institute — the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults — produced some of the classic Iranian films in the 1970s and '80s, including some early children's films from the celebrated director Abbas Kiarostami. Rankin even uses a logo for his fictitious institute that looks suspiciously like the Iranian one. Actually, the onscreen text that I could read was in English subtitles, because the logo was rendered in Persian — unexpected for a purportedly Winnipeg-based organization. It's the first indication that this movie is not set in a world strictly like our own. In their screenplay, Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati came up with a world that is sort of a thought experiment: What if Tehran were Winnipeg? Or Winnipeg were Tehran? What if the landscapes were snowy, the Tim Hortons were teahouses and everyone spoke Persian? Persian and French, technically — this is Canada after all. There's no reason given for this alt-historical fact: This is just normal Canada but with Iranian cultural traditions having fully melded with Canadian ones for whatever reason. In fact, the first scene is set in a French-immersion language school full of rambunctious children, including one dressed up as Groucho Marx (cigar included) and one, named Omid (Sobhan Javadi), who insists that a turkey stole his glasses. The ill-tempered teacher (Mani Soleymanlou), who excoriates the children for not even having 'the decency to misbehave in French,' declares that there will no school until Omid has glasses again. Want all of The Times? Subscribe.
