U-Comedy: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (2024)
The title card sets the tone: if you don’t speak Farsi and don’t have access to the film’s subtitles, well, sucks for you.
The comedy that starts with U is my favorite movie of the challenge so far, and probably one of my favorite movies ever: UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE (UNE LANGUE UNIVERSELLE) by Matthew Rankin. Oh. My. Gosh. It is absolutely bizarre, smart, and beautiful. I had multiple brain orgasms throughout the entire movie. I would gladly sit through a seminar devoted to the dissection of this masterpiece.
UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE imagines a Canada where, instead of English, people speak Farsi! It’s still a bilingual Canada, but with Farsi and French! The language is only one aspect of it. It’s not just the English language that has been replaced, it’s the whole British culture. So I’d say that UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE imagines a Canada colonized by Persians instead of British settlers!
Since I never read the logline when I decide which film to watch, it took me a minute to understand what was going on. The first thing that surprised me was that the school in the very first shot had an English name (written in Persian), while the students and the teacher never spoke English.
This first image of the school seen from the outside is held in a static shot for quite some time. We see a late teacher cross the frame and enter the school, and we hear him scold the chatty pupils in Farsi, still in the same static shot
English is not heard once in that movie (except in the music during the end credits, which I think is a shame). Farsi and French.
Another thing that surprised me was the winter, which looked very Canadian to me, while I had imagined Iran as more of a desert of sand than a desert of snow... When I finally understood that it was taking place in Canada and not somewhere in the Middle East, I was confused by the number of Farsi-speaking institutions in Canada! It finally hit me that Rankin had created a new symbolic universe.
Matthew (played by Matthew Rankin, the writer-director of this film) arrives in Winnipeg
In Matthew Rankin’s Canada:
Canada’s national languages are French and Farsi (already established).
The national pastime is crying (people collect tears like others do stamps). There are many tear-related jobs such as lacrymologists, and the leading brand in the ecosystem is Kleenex.
Negin at a Kleenex shop
The brands don’t have colors. Grey and beige are the main color you’ll see on branded packagings.
Matthew wants to buy a large box of sleeping pills. The pharmacist (Bernard Arene) reacts in a depressing monotone voice: “Life is worth living, sir.” Not that he cares, but it’s his job to say that line.
A store only sells one thing, one product of the same single brand: you don’t have the luxury of choosing between brands.
There is solidarity between people, they know where each other live, they help each other out without asking for anything in exchange
Kids can walk outside unsupervised for hours after school, and no one sends an Amber alert
The only people who can still experience joy are children, and they get scolded for that.
The architecture is brutalist, which is, to me, the art of sadness and despair in its purest form.
The currency is not the Canadian dollar, but the Riel, as in Louis Riel, the Francophone leader of the Métis people in Manitoba, who was betrayed and killed by the Anglophones (who, to this day, in real-life Canada, have never owned up to this side of the story. I studied for the citizenship test, and the citizenship manual used the word “allegedly”, so...)
Louis Riel’s tomb is in the middle of a highway.
The national animal is the turkey.
This lady tells the driver that “Buses are strictly for humans”, and the bus driver (Ila Firouzabadi) answers that the turkey paid for that seat.
Tim Hortons mainly serves tea.
Wandering at the mall is strictly forbidden. Hence the absence of malls. If you’re a tourist guide, you need a permit to take the tourists to the mall. That permit allows you to spend 30 seconds inside the mall, stop wandering for Riel’s sake!
You can call a priest for your cat’s funeral. Funerals happen all the time. Anywhere can be a cemetery.
Political leaders are portrayed like Grand Ayatollahs
Zoom in and you will see Justin Trudeau on the top right! The subtitle says: “A strong economy to ward off feelings of emptiness and despair” Which is weird, because I thought being sad was the whole point… See? I need that seminar.
Up next on my watchlist: a drama that starts with V, a queer romance that starts with W, and a non-queer romance that starts with X! (Ouch! Could it be porn?)