Final Rating: 4/5
Matthew Rankin’s sophomore film Universal Language takes place in modern day Winnipeg, but not the one you know. Canada’s two official languages are French and Persian, with Anglophones excised not only in language but in cultural influences.
The setting more closely resembles that of 70’s and 80’s Iranian cinema than real-life Manitoba. But despite the imagined setting, it’s a nostalgic film, exploring the feeling of returning home after a long time away in a way that’s instantly recognizable.
Universal Language follows three main storylines. In the first, young girls Negin and Nazgol find 500 Riels (this world’s stand-in for the Canadian dollar) frozen in ice and ask Massoud (Pirouz Namati) to watch it while they find a tool to retrieve it. The second plot follows Massoud in his job as a tour guide for obscure Winnipeg attractions. The final storyline centres on Matthew (Rankin playing himself) as he leaves his job in Montreal, returning home to visit his mother for the first time in several years.
Universal Language effortlessly weaves the three together, evoking Richard Linklater’s Slacker. The camera takes on a life of its own, on occasion seemingly losing interest in one character and flying over to wherever the next is. Sometimes, there’s no next character to find, and the camera will simply linger on B-roll of the highway, or other aspects of the brutalist, over industrialized rendition of Winnipeg.
Rankin’s Winnipeg is composed of mostly non-descript architecture along roads or in front of large walls. And yet the visual language of the film is wistful, encouraging the audience to take in scenery that’s presented as beautiful, despite being rendered in dull browns and grays.
Massoud’s storyline dives deep into the theme of nostalgia. Characters remark several times in the film that Winnipeg is “an odd destination for tourism,” and Massoud’s tour, focusing primarily on highly unconventional “monuments,” never contradicts this. As he leads an increasingly frustrated tour group, Massoud stops at such sights as the grave of Louis Riel – located on a traffic island in the middle of a 4-lane highway – an abandoned suitcase from 1978 on a bench by a bus stop, and a fountain in a sleepy mall that’s been turned off for years.
With the exception of the grave, none of Massoud’s landmarks have much obvious historical significance (though the suitcase, humorously, has apparently been designated a UNESCO heritage site), but each has a story. Massoud reminisces about the speculation over what’s in the briefcase, the promise of the Portage Place Mall and its ultimate demise, and even hires a group of grade-schoolers to re-enact “The Great Parallel Parking Incident of 1958” in front of one of his favourite parking complexes.
The tour group does not share Massoud’s enthusiasm for local landmarks, instead mostly complaining about their time being wasted.
As in the real world, Winnipeg is culturally quite different from Montreal. In Universal Language, Montreal is full of remarkably self-absorbed and metropolitan Quebecers. The Quebecers make Quebec the whole of their identity: Matthew’s boss points out that he campaigned for “Yes” on the separation referendum in 1995; a used-furniture salesman in an ad goes out of his way to emphasize that his goods are used only by Quebecers; a running gag even has Francophones repeatedly mistaking Winnipeg for Alberta.
Portraits of Quebec premier Francois Legault adorn multiple walls of an otherwise empty government office where Matthew meets with his boss early in the film. In Rankin’s depiction of Quebec, he critiques incuriousness by way of separatism. In identifying so heavily with Quebec, the denizens of Montreal see the rest of Canada as inconsequential. It doesn’t matter that they mistake Alberta for Manitoba, or even whether they know where either of those places are.
Though Rankin’s view of Montreal seems contemptuous, it’s notable that the Montreal of Universal Language is seen only through Matthew’s interactions with bureaucrats. Winnipeg is seen through the eyes of children and adults who have spent their whole lives there, and Matthew returning to his childhood home after several years. Montreal is itself seen as somewhere “other”. The rosy view of home and the characterisation of the cities feel like personal touches for Rankin, a Winnipeg native who has spent much of his adult life in Montreal.
Rankin creates a city that feels lived in, while his use of relatively simple set-pieces encourages the audience to project their own home onto his. The universal language so integral to the film is neither Farsi nor French, it’s nostalgia, shared between Rankin and the audience.
Universal Language was seen during the 2024 Toronto International Film Festival. Thank you to Route504 for the advanced screener.
