Young Critics review: Universal Language

Review by Theo Du

Salam, agha. Are you driving to Tim Hortons?

Universal Language by Canadian writer Matthew Rankin starts with a diorama of a Persian school in Winnipeg. In a long shot of a school courtyard covered in snow, we see Iraj, a teacher (Mani Soleymanlou), with two big tan suitcases running in. The shot is composed geometrically, we can see through the window a rowdy classroom of children. As if by magic (the magic of doors and of cinematic space) the teacher barges in through the door, silencing the room immediately. Scolding his pupils, not for indiscipline, but for their chatter being in Farsi instead of French. Still in the same shot, a child runs through the same snow. And when the camera finally comes in from the cold, we see the earmuffed child explaining how his glasses were taken away in a turkey incident.

Despite being set in Winnipeg, Rankin and his Iranian co-writers Pirouz Nemati and Ila Firouzabadi dedicated it to the legacy of Iranian cinema. This hybridity of cultures is doubled down in the film, for the Persian-Canadian logic of Universal Language is never explained. The opening continues with Iraj asking the classroom what they aspirations are in life. The answers include: a boy in a fur coat saying fashion photographer, a kid impersonating a comedian with a fake mustache and an unlit cigarette saying comedian, a diplomat, a tour guide, and a donkey breeder. While this scene provoked the most laughter of any screenings I have been to at Ghent, I remained skeptical about the charm of the film. There is a very strong flavor of millennial cringe throughout the film, with its deadpan humor and brand names as punchline (Kleenex repository being the most baffling one). Yet as the film continues into the stark coldness of Persian-Winnipeg (Pinnipeg?), its space heaters and hot tea slowly melted my cold heart.

Universal Language carves out a lane of alternate history where the blisteringly cold capital of Manitoba was taken over by the temperate Tehran 10,000 kilometers away. The film portrays a wonderful cast of characters, all related to each other in one way or another. Multiple plotlines are interwoven together, one following two siblings attempting to excavate a 200 rial bill from the ice, another follows a tour guide as he shows off the local Winnipegger locales. The heart of the narrative resides in Matthew returning from his municipal job in Montreal. As he visits his childhood home and arrange to meet his estranged mother, Matthew ends up being at the core of all the innocuous storylines. Culminating in a breathtaking slow-motion shot of the winter wind blowing a door open.

Rankin and co-writers, who also star in the film, spent ten years developing the project. Their dedication can be felt in the overwhelming effort put into making their version of Winnipeg a believable place. Streets are covered by signs in Farsi for turkey butcheries and Tim Hortons. Yet for some, the intensity of jokes and cultural reference might be alienating.

Despite the title, Universal Language speaks in a very specific tongue. Its claim of universality is where my skepticism remained. As much as it is enjoyable to chuckle at a Quebecoise commercial for a second-hand furniture store that only carries furniture used by Quebecoise families, there is a threshold to the culturally specific comedy one can understand as an outsider. Yet this is also where I found the most enjoyment from the film: exactly within its stubborn refusal to translate fully its own humor to the uninitiated. As is the case with another Winnipeg native, Guy Maddin, the unbearable winter forced them to locate the warmth somewhere else. The clay beige of Tehran is therefore translated into the concrete block of Winnipeg. Nature replaced with a pure artificiality.

What the film really understands about the magic of the works by Iranian masters like Abbas Kirostami shines through in its tone. Despite a near incessant joke count, the film is never cynical nor mean-spirited. Within its lightness, the film smuggles in a serious story about being alienated from your own culture in a foreign land. Pinnipeg starts to make sense as much more than a stylistic exercise with an important revelation towards the end of the film. The trace of the two main characters the film follows has been switched the whole time: not a story of Matthew returning from his city job, but of Massoud alienated from his home culture, returning home to an aging mother that no longer recognizes her own son. It is a very short moment in the film, yet recontextualizes the entire endeavor. The cliches and tropes of Iranian cinema transcend beyond a cinephilic exercise, and reformulate the Persian tea serving Tim Hortons into a pricking scenario that captures the alienating experience of being a third culture kid.