You’ll be scratching your head throughout “Universal Language,” that is, when you’re not howling. I am at a loss to explain the meaning of this wacky film that is described by its writer-director Matthew Rankin as being “In a mysterious and bizarre interzone somewhere between Tehran and Winnipeg where the lives of multiple characters interweave with each other in surprising and mysterious ways.” Would that this adequately described this surreal film that will have you laughing out loud at its comic absurdity.
Without expectation, I dove into this film, Canada’s shortlisted entry to the International Oscar, expecting some kind of tie to that country’s culture or citizenry. But no. It begins in a French immersion classroom, allegedly in Winnipeg, but for all intents and purposes looks and sounds remarkably like a generic industrial neighborhood in Tehran. A teacher has arrived late to his class of students who, like students everywhere, have not done their homework and furthermore mix their Farsi with rudimentary French. Railing against his fate, he had left Montreal to transfer his skills to wonderful and progressive Winnipeg, land of opportunity, beauty and Forks Harbor where the Red and Assiniboine Rivers intersect.
Matthew, is on his way to reconnect with his mother, having quit his government job in Montreal, finds himself on a bus with the French teacher returning to Winnipeg after a short vacation. Also on the bus is VIT, that’s Very Important Turkey. All will eventually come clear. No it won’t but there’s a time and place for every absurdity.
Christmas tree. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Arriving in lovely Winnipeg, an ironic statement if ever there was one, it is all beige, nondescript brutalist buildings, in a neighborhood that is ironically defined by color. The brown section is as beige as the red section is as beige as the yellow section. Pay attention to these descriptors because there will be a quiz at the end. Much like an episode of “Seinfeld,” numerous plots, if they can be called that, intersect with different characters, emphasis on different, all waiting to be wrapped up in an ending incorporating them all.
Two young girls walking home from school spy a banknote frozen in some ice. They have an altruistic plan for the money if they can find a way to dig it out. Soon a random man, let’s call him Massoud, appears, no doubt with plans for that same frozen bill. Massoud notes that the girls will need a shovel or axe to remove the note and kindly offers to make sure the money doesn’t fly away. Skeptical, the girls go off in search of tools, getting lost in the various beige city sections.
It is highly unlikely that you will have ever met characters like these. The girls want to help a classmate whose new eyeglasses were lost when she was attacked by a turkey. Turkeys figure prominently in this story. Again, I hesitate to call what you will see a story; it’s more a collection of unfinished anecdotes. But turkeys there are; beautiful turkeys serenaded by a turkey singer and owned by a turkey entrepreneur waiting for his latest prize acquisition to arrive on a bus where said turkey occupies his own, first class seat. There are live turkeys, packaged turkeys, pet turkeys, escaped turkeys. Never have you seen so many turkeys living a life of luxury in Winnipeg.
Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
Matthew, in the meantime, is on the hunt for his mother, no longer living in his childhood home. His phone call to her is answered by someone else claiming to be her son; maybe. His mother, in the full throes of Alzheimer’s, has been taken in by another family who she assumes is her own. The fake Matthew is also the man guarding the frozen money, as well as a guide leading tourists to his favorite sights in beloved Winnipeg, one of which is the no longer functioning fountain in the abandoned shopping mall.
There is nothing to give away in any of these story threads because they are all absurd with quasi resolutions that underscore the preposterous pointlessness of each sequence. Why, you might ask, would you subject yourself to 90 minutes of almost controlled mayhem? Because once you acclimate to the absurdity, like adjusting to a dark room, it is one of the funniest films you will see this year. When the situations are bizarre, the characters are grounded; when the characters are strange, the situations are more realistic; and, of course, sometimes both are irrational and wacky.
Director Rankin, working with Iranian writers Ila Firouzabadi and Pirouz Nemati, cast himself and his associates as characters in the film. Rankin plays Matthew, the man trying to reconnect with his mother only to discover that she recognizes a stranger as her son; Nemati is Massoud, the everyman who is the so-called new son, the tour guide and the man watching over the frozen money with ill intent; Firouzabadi is the bus driver couriering the prize turkey to his new owner. Didn’t help, did it.
Matthew Rankin and Dara Najmbadi. Photo courtesy of Oscilloscope Laboratories.
There is absolutely no way to make any of this comprehensible which is why you must allow the characters to wash over you. Why Rankin made Winnipeg (and briefly Montreal) a stand in for Tehran is a question without answer. Rankin spent an aborted period in Iran hoping to study with the directors Jafar Panahi (“The White Balloon”) and the Makhmalbaf family (“The President”), masters of the meta-realist style where symbolism collides with reality and psychological interpretation. Space is a point of view, a perception, not a reality. He was unable to work with them but he gained an appreciation for the culture, the symbolist poetry and the style of Iran, determined to incorporate all of that, along with some of his own personal story, into a meta-realist homage to the Iranian directors and poets he so admires.
Recognizing full well that none of the above makes any sense, that is, precisely the point. Time is merely a concept not a chronology. And yet, there is something to follow, much like Ariadne’s thread, and the illogical end is still wholly satisfying, if only because of the belly laughs along the way. Who knew you could make a farce in Farsi?
The universal language? Comedy and laughter – the best remedy in an absurd world.
In Farsi and French with English subtitles.
Opening February 14 at the AMC Burbank