Persepolis

The black-and-white animation, highly stylized and two dimensions which doesn't attempt to render the usual cartoon 3-D, summarizes in quick, intelligent flashes, often impressionistic, growing up in Teheran and Vienna from a highly personal point of view. The narrative is as original as the art. The narrator, Marjane Satrapi, only daughter of an educated Teheran couple, first sketches in briefly how the Shah first came to power,only to lose it and have it replaced by the fanatical religious regime of today. Educated in a French school, she and her family are rapidly alienated from the so-called revolution; she is sent to Vienna to continue her education, falls in with a group of punks and eventually returns both depressed and disillusioned to Teheran where, with other university students, she must submit to the rule of extreme Islamists.

The story covers a great deal of ground from the point of view of a young pro-Western culture radical, and is told with humor and intelligence. She laughs at herself as much as at the semi-lunatic Guards of the Revolution.

Satrapi's hold on reality is much strengthened under the influence of her highly honest grandmother who teaches her not co compromise, not to betray and not to give in.

This is no fairy tale with flying horses and beautiful princesses, but a serious, unsentimental and sometimes brutally honest film covering, among other events, the story of the millions of Iranians and Iraqis who died in a now forgotten seven year war around the Persian Gulf.

Marjane Satrapi's venture to present the chronicle of the Iranian Islamic revolution filtered through the eyes of a lively and cheeky, French-educated young girl is bold and ambitious. To do so by the help of strong-silhouetted, axe-carved, triangle-nosed cartoon figures is even more peculiar. Her powerful heroine – Marjane, named by no coincidence after the creator – however, spectacularly succeeds in replacing and emulating any possible real flesh characters. She is intellectual, witty, utterly impudent and very funny; the essential Euro-kid of the wild and untamed 1970s and early 1980s.

This brilliant movie serves as a study proving that animation is more powerful and potent than ever before no matter how unsophisticated and basic the visual elements are. And although the technique used in Persepolis has long been present it can be said that perfection has just been achieved.

Satrapi's work is so very French: wantonly intellectual, acrimoniously witty, utterly sarcastic and outrageously funny. However, even this masterpiece could not escape common places and is not without disturbing occurrences of generalization of characters and situations. Still, you will have a wide and genuine smile on your face coming out of the theater. Persepolis is per se unique and compelling with the ability to make you smile at the right moments - when tension has built up too much.

Persepolis tells the amazing story of a young girl growing up in Iran around the time of the Islamic Revolution. Marjane Satrapi does a wonderful job of bringing her story to life and drawing the viewer into her what it was to grow up during a time of political revolution. Using a unique style of animation, that closely follows the style of the graphic novel, the audience is pulled into a world that is much different than the world they are used to.

Marjane's story is often times humorous and often times heart breaking without resorting to heavy handed sentimentalism that is often seen in Hollywood movies. There were times that I laughed out loud during the movie, particularly the "Eye of the Tiger" sequence which had me in stitches. Other times during the film I had to wipe a tear from my eye. I won't spoil any of those moments for anyone, but there were parts of the film that left me crushed.

The characters in the story were all very interesting and all seemed very real. I loved watching Marjane grow from a child to an adult and seeing how she dealt with struggles as extreme as a revolution and as simple as the end of a relationship. Most of the supporting characters were interesting as well and extremely well thought out. The most memorable of the side characters though, would have to be Marjane's grandmother. She almost acted as Marjane's moral compass throughout the film and in most cases she did it with a great cynicism and humor that only someone who has lived through so much could have.

As an American I will probably never know what it is like to live in a state of such political oppression as the one depicted in the film. It is an extremely hard thing to even imagine what people go through during such political struggles. However, one of the things that makes this movie unique is that a lot of it is told from the point of view of a child that does not really understand the politics of what is going on around her. This really helped draw me into the movie. Since I do not understand what it is like to be in the situation, having the story told from the point of view of someone that doesn't really grasp the enormity of the events unfolding around her really helped to bring me into the story. It was very helpful in trying to comprehend the scale of what was happening in the movie, not that I claim to totally comprehend what this young girl must have gone through.

The animation style of the film is definitely interesting and unique. It is a lot different than anything I have seen before and I really enjoyed the style that was used. The more simplistic animation that was used definitely worked well with the story being told from the point of view of a child. The child in the story could not totally grasp all the details of what was going on during the revolution and having a less detailed style of animation definitely helped emphasize this. Also, having a style of animation that was so different than what audience are used to also helped emphasize that we were viewing a world that was, in many ways, much different than our own.

Overall I really enjoyed the film and it is one that I may eventually want to see again. I really would like to read the graphic novels that it was based on and probably even a few of the other graphic novels written by Marjane Satrapi. I think she is a wonderful talent and I hope she continues to make such interesting films, perhaps bringing some of her other graphic novels to the big screen.

Persepolis is one of the most thoughtful, poignant and original films I have ever seen. Hang on, "poignant" and "thoughful", an animated movie (and based on a comic-book, on top of that)? Exactly, because coincidentally Persepolis also happens to be the first really adult "cartoon" I've had the pleasure to watch (Waking Life and A Scanner Darkly don't count, as they were filmed with real actors first, and subsequently modified in post-production). For all their good intentions, the likes of Dreamworks and Pixar always have an eye for what the little ones want to see, while The Simpsons, despite the occasional "mature" storyline (basically Homer and Marge's sex life), contains nothing a 12-year old isn't supposed to see. As for Family Guy and South Park, they might be aimed at grown-ups with their merciless satire and, in the case of the latter series, explicit language, but are made with an almost puerile sense of joy which prompts younger kids to watch them in secret. Persepolis, on the other hand, deals with adult themes in a serious, unpretentious way. So yes, it is an animated film. Yes, it is based on a comic-book. And yes, there is the occasional neat movie reference (Rocky III being the most memorable one). That doesn't mean it's a kids' movie, though; it just means the picture was made with a particular style because it was the most effective way to tell this specific story.

And what is so special about the story? Well, it is an account of what is going on in contemporary Iran, a topic that is more relevant today than it's ever been before. And the extra layer of poignancy derives from the fact that co-director Marjane Satrapi experienced every single event in the film. After moving to France to avoid the increasingly oppressive political situation that had developed in Teheran (which the ancient Greeks called Persepolis, hence the movie's title), she published her autobiography in the form of a graphic novel, which immediately became a cult phenomenon. With the help of artist Vincent Paronnaud, the stylized drawings have become a motion picture which has already conquered critics and won several awards (the Jury Prize in Cannes being one of them).

The film's strict adherence to the book's style makes for simple but powerful viewing: the simple pictures ensure the story doesn't need to be filtered, but can be understood right away, while the use of black and white provide the images with a strength that would otherwise be missing. A good example is a scene depicting a demonstration against the despotic regime in Iran and the subsequent shooting of one of the protesters, whose body is left lying on the ground: as his blood starts to flow, the corpse almost merges with the environment, giving the shot (pun not intended) an emotional relevance it wouldn't have, had the whole thing been in color. The choice of animation proves to be particularly effective in a most unusual choice for this kind of film, namely fantasy sequences: there is a hilarious moment, for instance, when Marjane, during a stay in Vienna, looks back on her disappointment in love and sees her ex-boyfriend as a depraved freak; live-action would have ruined that scene, undoubtedly. As it is, however, it comes off not as a bizarre formal experiment, but a fundamental tool for understanding the heroine's psychology.

That said, it should also be noted that Persepolis isn't just a bold take on the difficulties in the Middle East. As seen in Clint Eastwoood's Iwo Jima double bill, the line between "heroes" and "villains" is very thin, and the film never misses the opportunity to show how bad our own society can be: Marjane ends up hating Europe more than her home-country, and at the beginning a flashback shows the British government's role in manipulating Iranian politics for money's sake. Incidentally, the latter scene is depicted as a puppet show, providing a new, fresh angle: what sets truth apart from fiction?

Persepolis works because it handles an uncomfortable subject with grace, using a simple but constantly effective storytelling technique and never once pandering to audience expectations with the usual 'toon gimmicks (even the casting proves that: except for Catherine Deneuve, who plays the low-key role of Marjane's mother, there are no famous voices in the feature). It sticks to traditions and stretches the medium at the same time, showing that animation is no longer a "children's genre" and therefore delivering a new way to look at film-making and its possibilities. For this reason, and several more, it is one of the best pictures of 2007.

...in fact, there is nothing average about this film. Traditionally animated in black and white flashbacks, it tells the story of a French-speaking woman's childhood and young adulthood in Tehran, Iran, and in Vienna during the 1980s and '90s.

Marjane Satrapi grew up in a family of revolutionaries against the Shah's regime and the Islamic government that subsequently took hold, and the film literally illustrates her feelings and thought processes as a little girl, following her as the government control in Iran got more and more strict. When her parents insist she leave the country, we also see her struggling to deal with adolescence and missing her beloved family; when she returns, she is also coping with the increasing repression of her freedoms as a woman. Most of all, you see her own personal conflict as she tries to stay true to herself.

This movie beautifully balances both the historic and personal issues and pulls the threads together into a compelling narrative, made a bit quirky by the style of presentation, resulting in work that is altogether touching. Along with intelligence and humor, a deep and strong sense of truth infuses every part of this film, making it even stronger. One of my only qualms was the feeling that it ended somewhat abruptly without much of a conclusion.

Overall, though, it was fantastic - definitely worth watching.