Persepolis

I came out of this movie feeling as if I knew Marjane Satrapi. The way in which the story is told is fantastic - it really is as if you're reading her journal. As she grows up from being a young girl to an adult, at each age the story is told with a corresponding maturity, and highlighting things which seem like very personal memories. As a young girl, the stories she is told are very black and white, and as she gets older the complexity increases, which is exactly what you would expect. Although there is lots of political activity, she makes fun of herself and highlights her own shortcomings as much as she highlights the repressive elements in her homeland. By telling of her own experiences it really is extremely easy to see how so much of it is common to a whole generation of Iranians. Her love of her family and her country came across very strongly, and you really felt as if she had laid herself bare. A moving and entertaining movie as much as it is educational about post-1979 Iran.

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.

...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.

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.