Lost in Translation: Universal Language is a Funny Bit of Absurdism

Maison 4:3

4/5 stars

Film is one of the best art forms for connecting audiences with a place and a people, but what happens when the filmmaker intentionally tries to obfuscate those elements? I think that is the case with Matthew Rankin's (The Twentieth Century) new film Universal Language which is tangentially related to Winnipeg, but in such a fantastical way that it becomes more dream than reality. The film is a deadpan and uproariously funny look at how language and location connect and divide us simultaneously. The result is like all the best elements of Roy Andersson, Aki Kaurismaki, and the films of the Iranian New Wave all mixed together.

It is winter in a city that may be Winnipeg, but may also be Tehran. Negin (Rojina Esmaeili) and Nazgol (Saba Vahedyousefi) find some money frozen in ice on the sidewalk that they think they can use to buy new glasses for a classmate whose old glasses were stolen by a turkey. While trying to free it from the ice, they run into Matthew (Rankin), a government worker who leaves his job to visit his estranged mother. In the middle of these stories is Massoud (Pirouz Nemati), a guide leading confused tourists through the most surreal and pedestrian tour of a city imaginable.

As these stories all converge and coalesce, Rankin emphasizes the absurdity of their situations. Through dry humor, he combines the artificiality of day-to-day life with the authenticity of film. Characters find connection not through place or language (although seemingly set in Canada, most characters speak Farsi) but through the very human drive to find meaning in the meaningless. These kinds of existential questions always work better through comedy, and Universal Language is one of the funniest in recent memory.

Universal Language is currently playing in select theaters and is also available on Amazon Prime, Apple TV+, Google Play, and YouTube.

Directed by Matthew Rankin // Written by Rankin, Ila Firouzabadi, and Pirouz Nemati // Starring Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, Mani Soleymanlou, Ila Firouzabadi, Danielle Fichaud, Bahram Nabatian, and Sobhan Javadi // Maison 4:3 // 89 minutes // Unrated