Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop
No Result
View All Result
Dream Wired
No Result
View All Result
Home Movie

Matthew Rankin’s Iranian Cinema Homage

rmtsa by rmtsa
May 27, 2024
in Movie
0
Matthew Rankin’s Iranian Cinema Homage
74
SHARES
1.2k
VIEWS
Share on FacebookShare on Twitter


You might also like

Michael Madsen, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Star, Dies at 67

Countdown Episode 5 Release Date, Time, Where to Watch

Vytautas Katkus Feature Director Debut on Solitude

Newsflash: Iran has invaded the sleepy Canadian city of Winnipeg. Correction: Iranian cinema has actually invaded Winnipeg. And even more specifically: Two Iranian movies that launched the nation onto the international film scene, Abbas Kiarostami’s Where Is the Friend’s House? (1987) and Jafar Panahi’s The White Balloon (1995), have somehow found their way into the capital of Manitoba.

What exactly they’re doing there is never explained. Nor is it really the point of director Matthew Rankin’s bizarre and enchanting experimental comedy Universal Language, which picked up the first-ever audience award in Cannes’ Directors’ Fortnight. Starring the director himself alongside a cast of Farsi-speaking locals both young and old, the film is rather hard to describe on paper, but let’s give it a shot.

Universal Language

The Bottom Line

The Persian version.

Venue: Cannes Film Festival (Directors’ Fortnight)Cast: Rojina Esmaeili, Saba Vahedyousefi, Sobham Javadi, Mani Soleymanlou, Matthew Rankin, Pirouz NematiDirector: Matthew RankinScreenwriters: Matthew Rankin, Pirouz Nemati, Ila Firouzabadi
1 hour 29 minutes

We’re in snow-covered Winnipeg, which half-resembles the drab, midsized Canadian city, and half looks like a neigborhood somewhere in Tehran — not present-day Tehran, but Tehran circa the 1980s and 90s. The signage is all in Farsi, there’s an outdoor market attached to an industrial warehouse where you can buy old typewriters or vacuum cleaners, chickens are wandering around in the snow, and the local branch of Tim Horton’s serves donuts and Persian specialties. What the hell is going on here?

You don’t have to be a major fan of the aforementioned Iranian classics — which this critic definitely is — to recognize Rankin’s homages to them throughout Universal Language, but it helps. The film’s opening, set in a classroom where a teacher (Mani Soleymanlou) scolds his students in a mix of Farsi and French, is straight out of Friend’s House, as are a host of other sequences. One of those students (Saba Vahedyousefi) finds a 500 Rial bill frozen in the ice, enlisting a school friend (Rojina Esmaelli) to help fish it out — which is exactly the plot of Panahi’s The White Balloon, ice notwithstanding.

Rankin’s feature debut, The Twentieth Century, was already a homage to old movies, recreating Hollywood Golden Age musicals by way of the frenzied retro montages of Guy Maddin (like Rankin, a native Winnipegger).

The style in Universal Language is worlds apart from that film. Cinematographer Isabelle Stachtchenko mimics the grainy, static 16mm look of Kiarostami’s early work, which was funded by Iran’s Institute for Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults (whose logo Rankin even copies in the opening credits). Set designer Louisa Schabas inserts Farsi advertising wherever she can, whether on park benches, shopping mall billboards, local TV commercials or by transforming the original Tim Horton’s logo familiar to every Canadian.

Some peole will enjoy Universal Language just by sifting through all these strange details, but Rankin also includes a minimalist plot where he plays a local, also named Matthew Rankin, arriving back in Winnipeg after living for years in Montreal.

When he calls his mother on the phone before visiting, a man named Massoud (Pirouz Nemati) picks up, and it becomes clear that he’s taken Matthew’s place. So here we are in yet another Kiarostami film, the 1990 masterpiece Close-Up, about a young man who assumed the identity of director Mohsen Makhmalbaf, infiltrating a family until he was found out.

Rankin never takes things quite that far here, and his new film is much less of a drama than a quirky, deadpan comedy with a few standout moments — such as a scene where Massoud gives a tour of a depressing Winnipeg mall fountain as if he were presenting some kind of major revolutionary monument.

By converting his drab hometown into an exotic land filled with nostalgia (albeit a very niche nostalgia, primarily for Criterion Channel subscribers), Rankin seems to be seeking out the universal language of cinema itself. In his own very weird way he manages to find it, turning an everyday place into something momentarily special — which is what all good movies are supposed to do.



Source link

Tags: CinemahomageIranianMatthewRankins
Share30Tweet19
rmtsa

rmtsa

Recommended For You

Michael Madsen, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Star, Dies at 67

by rmtsa
July 6, 2025
0
Michael Madsen, ‘Kill Bill’ and ‘Reservoir Dogs’ Star, Dies at 67

Michael Madsen has died. The actor was 67.Madsen was found unresponsive early Thursday morning (July 3) at his home in Malibu, Calif.He was later pronounced dead, according to...

Read more

Countdown Episode 5 Release Date, Time, Where to Watch

by rmtsa
July 6, 2025
0
Countdown Episode 5 Release Date, Time, Where to Watch

The Countdown Episode 5 release date and time is not too far away, and many want to know the streaming details. The crime drama centers around an LAPD...

Read more

Vytautas Katkus Feature Director Debut on Solitude

by rmtsa
July 6, 2025
0
Vytautas Katkus Feature Director Debut on Solitude

If you haven’t followed the rise of Lithuanian cinema on the global film festival circuit in recent years, you may not know the name of young filmmaker and...

Read more

Coca-Cola’s STAR WARS Short Film Is a Joyful Tribute to The Fans — GeekTyrant

by rmtsa
July 6, 2025
0
Coca-Cola’s STAR WARS Short Film Is a Joyful Tribute to The Fans — GeekTyrant

Coca-Cola and Disney just dropped a new short film/commercial that feels like a thank you letter to Star Wars fans. Set in a movie theater during a full-on...

Read more

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Highest-Paid Movie Isn’t What You Think

by rmtsa
July 6, 2025
0
Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Highest-Paid Movie Isn’t What You Think

Arnold Schwarzenegger has headlined some of Hollywood’s biggest blockbusters — The Terminator, Predator, Total Recall — but none of those explosive classics made him the most money.In a...

Read more
Next Post
Lenny Hochstein Accuses Ex Lisa Hochstein of Physical Abuse

Lenny Hochstein Accuses Ex Lisa Hochstein of Physical Abuse

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Browse by Category

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized

CATEGORIES

  • Celebrity
  • Comics
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • Music
  • TV
  • Uncategorized
No Result
View All Result

Recent News

  • What Caused the Flooding in Texas? How the Floods Happened – Hollywood Life
  • #ESSENCEFest: National Urban League Luncheon
  • Hip-Hop Artists We Lost in 2025

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • Celebrity
  • DramaAlert
  • Gossip
  • Movie
  • TV
  • Music
  • Comics
  • Shop

Copyright © 2023 DramaWired.
DramaWired is a content aggregator and not responsible for the content of external sites.

Welcome Back!

Login to your account below

Forgotten Password?

Retrieve your password

Please enter your username or email address to reset your password.

Log In