Here's a rough draft of a review I'm submitting for a magazine. As soon as details and publishing [?] happens, I'll let you know.
Persepolis
Persepolis, based on the same-titled graphic novel published by Pantheon, begins with an older Marie-Jean (the French Sobriquet to Marjane] in the process of checking in at an Airport terminal in preparation for a departure. We do not know where she is taking flight from but the tone connotes a painful decision and reminiscent longing. Though unavoidable, politics is the backdrop to this bildungsroman, coming of age, story. It serves the purpose of providing a context without overriding the intimacy of a young girl’s development.
Persepolis is a visual autobiography by Marjane Satrapi, of a young woman growing up in Revolutionary Iran. In January 1978, the monarchy of the Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi was overturned and became an Islamic Republic under the Ayatollah Kohmeini.
Marie Jean reacts to this changing climate, at once exposed to the harsh politics and protected by her parents. At its core level this film can be described as a coming of age film where a young girl, confronted with an ever-increasing restrictive Iran is ultimately sent away to France. Young Marie jean is the archetype of the charismatic sweetly rebellious child.
During the rise of the Islamic Republic’s religious right and the requisite imposition of religious mores, young Marie Jean wears her Hijab, woman’s scarf, but also sports her carefully hand-drawn “Punk Rock Is Not Ded jacket.
While Allah plays a strong role in her life and her earliest endeavor is to become a prophet. Nightly, she converses with God. Yet, she when exposed to Karl Marx’s Dialectic Materialism
Marie-Jean cannot help to make the connection, ”It was funny to see how much Marx and God looked like each other. Though Marx’s hair was a bit curlier.”
An ascendant of political thought and action Marie-Jean is no different in her childhood demonstrations. Her great Uncle Feyerdon declared himself Minister of Justice in the “newly Independent Province of Azerbiajan followed by the support her Uncle Anoosh. Feyerdon was assassinated by the Shah’s soldiers and Anoosh escaped to Russia, only to be imprisoned for trying to return home to Iran. Young Marie-Jean, upon discovering a classmate’s father was instrumental in torturing thousands of Iranians critical of the Shah set about with the aid of her friends to beat the child senseless with a fistful of nails. While the description comes off as harsh, you can only view Marie-Jean’s actions of an innocent spirited little girl reacting to injustice.
The most satisfying relationship within this film is Marie-Jean’s connection to her Grandmother. A matriarchal figure that plays
prominent through Marie-Jean’s life. Her wisdom is tempered by her wit and abundant tolerance.
With the advent of animation technology, the narrative usually takes a back seat to computer gimmicks and tricked out imagery. It is refreshing to see that the aesthetics if crafted to serve the narrative and not vice versa. The look of the film is a brilliant translation of the graphic novel. The animation is simple, the story telling sparse and imaginative. Its simplicity serves the story. The graphic novel is a black and white illustrated affair with simple representative renderings. The film plays predominantly in black and white as it recounts Marie-Jean’s weary story from Iran to France and her eventual return to France. The use of color in the film is meant to delineate the visual present from its past tense.
Persepolis is a film with the heart of young girl looking out into a world filled with magic, violence, love and the sweet scent of jasmines.
Persepolis
Directed byVincent Paronnaud
Marjane Satrapi
Writing creditsVincent Paronnaud screenplay
Marjane Satrapi comic & screenplay
Marjane Satrapi novel
