Persepolis

In our current international political environment, Persepolis is a timely animated movie about the history of Iran, especially during the last thirty some years.

It is a shame that the Foreign Language Film Award Committee continues to ignore some great foreign films for reasons unfathomable to many movie lovers. This year Persepolis and Romania’s 4 Months, 3 Weeks, 2 Days are two such victims. The film is a poignant coming-of-age story of a spunky, offbeat young Iranian girl and it gives viewers a peek into a life that western viewers have rarely seen. The movie is also an Iranian history lesson. If history had been taught in such entertaining fashion at schools, we would all have become history buffs. In particular, Persepolis covers in detail what the political environment and daily life have been like in the last thirty years in Iran.

The movie is based on Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel Persepolis. Satrapi doesn’t hide the fact that the book is based on her real life and in fact, the little girl in the center of the story, shares the author’s name. Marji is an extraordinary child, precocious and outspoken. Satrapi is so honest about herself, portraying all her weakness and exposing all her selfish and unkind acts towards others. Through her eyes, we see a country in constant turmoil and resilient people who are innovative in their secret defiance against an oppressive regime.

My favorite character in the movie has to be Marji’s grandma, an old lady with endless words of wisdom to dispense. I am sure every one of us wishes to have such a wise lady to guide us in time of confusion and darkness.

In current days of computer generated animation world, it is also fresh to see animation done the old fashioned way: drawing by hands with pens in simple black and white color. Satrapi’s drawings are immensely creative and she clearly has an imagination out of this world. Her rendition about Iran’s history is done in a funny yet serious fashion. She cuts down history to the bone so that it is easy for the westerns to follow. All the violence portrayed in the movie is either implied or done in a very tasteful way and it suggests horror much more than some so-called “realistic” approach preferred by many gratuitous directors.

With animation, Satrapi shows so much emotion without resorting to special effects or make up artists. The best sequence in the movie is about Marji’s first love affair in Vienna. When she is first in love, we see everything so beautiful and romantic and the mood completely reflects a woman in love. When she finds out that she is cheated on, we are shown a more realistic portrayal of their past time together without the tinted glasses and with an apparent bias to skewer the reality to the other extreme. I don’t think we truly know what her first love really looks like and we can only surmise he has to be somewhere in between the two images we are presented.

One way to know that you are watching a good movie is that you find yourself wanting to know more about the character and their lives. That is how I feel about Persepolis. After seeing the movie, I walked out of the theater still with many questions in my mind. The big one is how Marji supports herself while she is in a boarding school in Vienna. Can her parent send her money from Iran even under the rule of the Islamic Republic, or have they transferred some of their assets abroad before the revolution? I definitely want to know more about people’s economic situations in that country. It is a country so mysterious to many of us, and watching this movie makes that mystery shrink a bit. The movie also makes clear that we may differ in culture and history, but underneath we are fundamentally the same: we are all people who love freedom and may even share same craziness about rock’n roll. We need more movies such as Persepolis to bridge cultural understanding.