An animated film that covers as much epic and emotional ground as Doctor Zhivago.
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Animated adult films are nothing new, nor are full-length features based on graphic novels. But the one's I've seen usually have an edginess about them, a rawness, or a testosterone-fueled sensibility. That's why I was unprepared to feel an entirely different set of emotions when I watched "Persepolis," the animated film co-directed by graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi. The film is based on two graphic novels Satrapi wrote about her adolescence and young adulthood in Iran and Vienna. As much as it is a poignant coming-of-age story that packs an emotional punch, it's also an intellectual, hard-hitting political statement--something made evident by the protest Iran filed with France, who had chosen "Persepolis" as its official Academy Awards submission for Best Foreign Language Film.
Satrapi grew up in a communist household during the reign of the Shah, and her graphic novels (and this film) begin with a depiction of her liberal and politically-minded family and the ways in which they negotiate life under the tyrannical Shah. We see how they embrace revolution, thinking it will lead more freedoms, then watch them recoil in disbelief as the new fundamentalist government of the Ayatollah Khomeini becomes even more oppressive. And things worsen when war breaks out between Iraq and Iran.
Using a style of animation that preserves the two-dimensionality of the comics, Satrapi and co-writer/director Vincent Paronnaud create a visual world that reinforces the emotional content. As we listen to a narrative about how people who would not affirm loyalty to the government were executed, it's somehow more powerful to see men and women shot and falling to the ground who are drawn so simply they look like paper dolls. On one of the scene-specific commentaries, Satrapi explains that she uses color in the beginning, middle, and end as physical breaks. As we see the character Marjane in a French airport, we move from color to a black-and-white flashback of her childhood in Tehran. We meet Marjane's liberal mother (voiced by Catherine Deneuve), Marjane's politicized father (Simon Abkarian), and the even more overtly revolutionary Uncle Anouche (Francois Jerosme). And of course there's Marjane herself, voiced by Gabrielle Lopes (as a child) and Chiara Mastroianni (as an adult).
As these characters speak, and as they talk about politics and their hopes for a true revolution, you begin to realize how much better the scenes work in animation than if they were flesh-and-blood characters saying the same lines. Drawings and animation impart an innocent storybook quality that gives wings to truth and makes us accepting of a scenic shorthand that would seem underdeveloped in live-action. And yet, we get to know the cartoon Marjane so well and she seems so complex and three-dimensional that "Persepolis" becomes a rich and satisfying emotional journey spanning 16 years of this young woman's life. The picaresque structure allows us to appreciate how one character comes to terms with so much pain, repression, and confusing "liberation."
"Persepolis" is full of ideas and contrasts, and we see constant juxtapositions that make us appreciate the moral conflicts between religion and dogma, between spouting Marxist platitudes or living them, between East and West, and between love and what passes for love. While you might expect the sections set in Iran to be the most powerful and those set in Vienna--where a 14-year-old Marjane was sent by her parents to escape the new tyranny--those European sections are just as lively because of Satrapi's wry, embedded commentaries on love and life in the Western world. When Marjane finally decides to return to Iran for her college years, viewers have a full sense of why she needs to be back in Iran--though, as with Marjane herself, it might be hard to articulate. But the one constant (and the thing that places her most in danger) is the boldness of this little girl, who comes up with a list of rules for her own pretend government, and as a young woman told by police not to run because "when you run, your behind moves in an obscene way," she shouts, "SO DON'T LOOK AT MY ASS!" At moments like these, this graphics novel heroine seems like a superhero in a head scarf.
For all the emotion that "Persepolis" packs, there is also no shortage of humor. In one section, Marjane's parents return from the streets, where they just witnessed a boy under 20 shot by police. "What is this country coming to?" they ask, rhetorically. Grandma (Danielle Darrieux) quickly offers, "It's a shithole." Even Marjane's illustrated discussions with God are funny. Such scenes show that a sense of humor can also be a revolutionary response, but they also heighten the contrast between the light moments and the poignant ones, as when, before he is to be executed, Uncle Anouche is allowed one visitor and asks for a very small Marjane to converse with, dance with, and underscore how important the family history is for her to pass on. Moments of humor stand in stark contrast to scenes like one in which we're told that it is illegal to kill a virgin under the new government, but that doesn't mean young women are safe. We hear a story about how a guard married a woman the government wanted eradicated, took her virginity, and then they killed her. There are a number of case histories that work their way into Marjane's story, each of them equally hard to process. And the animation really highlights the powerful scenes. In one of them, we watch young men flee police who come to bust their alcohol, music, and mixed-sex party. As they attempt an impossibly wide jump from one rooftop to another and the last man approaches it timidly, we see him fall just short, though the building is kept off-frame, and the camera pans upward to capture a crescent moon.
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