In Common Language, director Matthew Rankin transforms the environs of his native Winnipeg right into a tight-knit Iranian hamlet. Ads and avenue indicators seem in Persian script, and Farsi is the first language spoken (though the federal government of Québec, close by within the topsy-turvy geography of the movie, nonetheless sternly insists on French). Townsfolk hawk wares from makeshift stalls set in opposition to Brutalist municipal blocks. Flocks of untamed turkeys wander snowy streets. In a single really resplendent second, glazed donuts mingle with brass samovars and beaded tablecloths at a candlelit Tim Horton’s (a doughnut chain began in Canada), tended to by a politely arch proprietress who appears straight out of Iranian director Abbas Kiarostami’s beloved 1999 movie The Wind Will Carry Us.
No clarification is obtainable for this surreal backdrop, and it’s simply one of many many quirks in Rankin’s world — together with a mall atrium by which nobody is allowed to face for greater than 10 seconds, and a forgotten briefcase left untouched for thus lengthy that it’s begun rising moss — from which a number of interconnected storylines slowly take type.
However the argot of the movie is greater than only a punchline. Farsi shapes Common Language, imbuing it with a tone of deadpan earnestness that’s gamely shared among the many massive solid of principally nonprofessional Iranian-Canadian actors. The Persian neighborhood of Rankin’s Winnipeg-Tehran hybrid is constructed like a closed circuit of mutual dependence and belief, and viewers will inevitably discover themselves, to some extent, on the surface wanting in.
Nonetheless from Common Language (2024), dir. Matthew Rankin (picture courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories)
Common Language begins at an elementary faculty, the place a strict and punishing teacher is educating a French class. When one boy can’t see the board nicely sufficient to learn a passage, the instructor threatens to dismiss class indefinitely till he’s ready to take action, setting off a sequence of incidents as two sympathetic classmates try to resolve the issue and set off a sequence response of neighborhood concern, hardly ever explaining their motivations to adults.
Rankin has insisted in interviews that his movie will not be political, which seemingly helped it attain theaters at a second when distributors are notably cautious of “controversial” tasks. However Common Language is so intent upon its worldbuilding that, in the end, the extra profound implications take maintain. Seeing acquainted placenames in an ostensibly unfamiliar script is a reliably good gag, nevertheless it’s arduous to overlook that some White North Individuals have lengthy thought of such realities an assault on their lifestyle. Like the USA, Canada is at the moment within the throes of Islamophobic violence and a conservative backlash that’s blatantly xenophobic at its core. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau not too long ago resigned after a wave of dissent, partially attributable to a housing affordability disaster many Canadians see as the results of over-lenient immigration.
Nonetheless from Common Language (2024), dir. Matthew Rankin (picture courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories)
Common Language’s commentary on the psychic frailty of White Westerners as we speak is telling — and vulnerably self-implicating on the a part of its director. Rankin himself performs a minor character within the movie, considered one of only a few who’s clearly of non-Iranian ancestry, although he speaks fluent Farsi similar to everybody else. He’s the outsider within the film, arriving belatedly by bus from Montréal, the place he spent the previous yr producing Francophile authorities propaganda. Again within the metropolis the place he was born, Rankin’s character wanders aimlessly looking for his mom. He ultimately finds her dwelling with a younger Iranian household whose patriarch, Massoud (co-writer Pirouz Nemati), looks as if Matthew’s Persian doppelgänger. This metaphorical substitute turns into literal within the climax of the movie when the 2 males swap our bodies. Outsider turns into insider, and vice versa. After the swap, the characters acknowledge one another for the primary time, not as aggressive adversaries however as codependent equals.
Although I don’t blame Rankin for his tight-lipped method, it feels vital to name Common Language what it’s: an absurdist comedy concerning the Nice Substitute Idea. The white nationalist conspiracy has these days leaped from the depths of the web straight into the Trump White Home.
In Common Language, Rankin wryly depicts the full realization of this racist worry, to superb impact. Removed from a fracturing of Canadian society, his movie renders its Winipeggers extra mutually invested in each other’s lives than any trendy Western metropolis may very well be. With a complete neighborhood coming collectively — knowingly or not, by means of the daisy chain of favors — to assist purchase a struggling pupil a brand new pair of glasses, and reunite a misplaced son, it’s a joyous depiction of emphatically unalienated folks. Maybe the common language to which the title refers is neither Farsi nor French, however the acts of attentiveness and care we’re clearly able to displaying each other, but hardly ever afford to these we contemplate strangers.
Nonetheless from Common Language (2024), dir. Matthew Rankin (picture courtesy Oscilloscope Laboratories)
Common Language (2024), directed by Matthew Rankin, is now screening in theaters.
