Universal Language (2024)

Absurdist films rarely work for me. There is often something insincere in them that fails to connect for me. Something isn't just funny cause it's weird. There needs to be something inside of that absurd text for it to resonate. There were times I wasn't sure with Universal Language but in the end it connected, it found its heart in a way that made up for so much of when it felt like it was trying a bit too hard. 

Universal Language creates a surreal Winnipeg (something that isn't uncommon - see the works of Guy Madden) where Persian is spoken, the money is named after Louis Riel, and the cityscape is a frost bitten, brutalist dystopia divided into grey, brown, and beige zones. The film seems obsessed a little with Canadian iconography of the most cliched kind (Tim Hortons for example) and this is where it started to lose me. But its narrative about loss of identity pulled me back in. 

The story is very loose as it intertwines a man returning to the city after many years in Montreal and two children attempting to dig some found money out of the ice. It is the way the film found to reach its bittersweet conclusion which convinced me. No matter how silly it sometimes felt, there was a melancholy here that was honest and rich. 

And it is a beautiful film to watch. It makes you cold just to see it but Rankin's love of the mundane beigeness of urban life is quite glorious to behold. One absurdist element I did enjoy (perhaps due to its more original feel) was the subplot of a tour-guide walking his freezing group through little stops besides freeways. There was just something so lovely about showing people little places which are meaningful to you for whatever reason. 

In the end that's why Universal Language worked for me. That in the messy absurdist folly Rankin finds a loveliness, a little loss to mourn. Perhaps you cannot come home again. Perhaps you become something new when you are away. Yet perhaps trying is still worth the journey.  

Universal Language

Director: Matthew Rankin

Writers:  Ila Firouzabadi, Pirouz Nemati, Matthew Rankin