{"id":27260,"date":"2008-02-14T09:07:00","date_gmt":"2008-02-14T09:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/?p=27260"},"modified":"2024-07-04T13:45:11","modified_gmt":"2024-07-04T05:45:11","slug":"marjane-satrapis-persepolis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/articles\/2008\/02\/marjane-satrapis-persepolis\/","title":{"rendered":"Marjane Satrapi’s “Persepolis”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n\n\n

Persepolis<\/em> is based on the best-selling graphic novel of the\nsame name by Marjane Satrapi. Directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud,\nfeaturing the voices of Danielle Darrieux and Cathering Deneuve, it won the\nJury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, along with a clutch of other international\nawards and nomination.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the book, the film is both a charming memoir of\nan Iranian woman, Marjane, and a chilling tale of national disintegration. Set\njust before the fall of the Shah of Iran, much of the film recounts Marjane’s\nchildhood in Tehran, her teenage years in Austria and her return to Iran soon\nafter.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in our first encounter with the central character, she is already an adult, a woman with a look of utter despondence on her face, encased in a French airport. That image remains. The voice of that older woman fills our heads, even as we are introduced, and subsequently charmed by the precocious Bruce Lee\u00ad-loving child.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Raised in a family of aristocratic intellectuals and\nrevolutionaries, Marjane’s life becomes the roadmap that leads us in our\njourney into Western culpability in the tragedy of Iran, the revolution which\ntoppled the autocratic Shah, and the nation’s subsequent descent into Islamic\nfundamentalist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story it unfolds however is filled with nuances\nand complexities that belie the reductive shorthand of the phrase “Iranian\nRevolution”. It is first and foremost, a film about failure — the failure\nof autocratic regimes to fully control individuals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Make no mistake that Marjane, her family, her friends, all pay a steep price -\u00ad- some with their lives, others with their freedom, still others with their sense of belonging — and none truly escape the impact of the regime. Her Uncle Anoush, a communist and intellectual, is briefly released from the Shah’s jail after the revolution, but soon finds himself jailed again by his fellow revolutionaries. The scene between Marjane and him — before his execution — is the first of many lump-in-the-throat moments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nonetheless, the lives of Marjane, her grandmother,\nthe salty moral centre of the film and her sophisticated parents, make clear\nthat even in the most repressive of regimes, spaces are found, minds expanded,\nrebellion stirred.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The film, however, avoids falling into the trap of\nuplifting, based-on-a-true-story films which usually amount to little more than\nDavid and Goliath, badly rehashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Amongst my favourite scenes were those where freedom\nand safety are wilfully disregarded in the pursuit of the more frivolous things\nin life. Street vendors, visually indistinguishable from the State’s moral\npolice, surreptitiously hawk Michael Jackson fan buttons and Iron Maiden\ncassettes; Marjane insistence on sporting red flags for ‘western immorality’, a\npunk jacket, worn just so, and the right sneakers; her father’s\n“Shit!” upon learning that all the wine in the house had been flushed\ndown the toilet, in order to avoid a police raid.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like the novel, the film’s operative emotion is a dry\nsense of humour, achieved through a sly combination the young Marjane’s\nwide-eyed wonder and the more canny, ironic voice of the adult narrator. A graphic\nnovel is, clearly, more amenable to transition into film. Its dependency on\nimage and the panel structure is virtually a ready-made storyboard. One does\nnot sense the compromises made (not always a negative), as acutely as one\nusually does when watching a film of a book enjoyed in advance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Persepolis<\/em>,\nthe animation is hand-drawn, and largely shot in monochrome. The old fashioned,\nna\u00efve art look of the film imbues it a whimsical, otherworldly quality, even\nmore so than the same visual style does in book form. Without the benefits of\nCG (the characters’ hair, when its not shrouded under veils, look nothing like\nMrs Incredible’ fine locks) the film is dependent on various visual devices to\nkeep the motion dynamic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Colour is used, with restraint, to signal present-day\nMarjane. When the narrative moves back into her past, the world turns to black\nand white, and every shade in between. It’s a remarkably versatile, and rich\npallet, aided by the imaginative use of various genres. As Marjane’s beloved\nuncle, Anoush gives her the real history of the Shah and his Machiavellian rise\nto power, the action moves to a Punch and Judy style stage, as the narrative\nunfolds in the form of a puppet theatre show. The point of one dimensional,\neasily manipulated characters, falling into line is certainly not lost on the\naudience. Stylistic references to Persian miniature paintings, of enclosed\ngardens, birds and clouds are used judiciously so as to never falter into\nexotic tokenism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The dense black and white silhouettes of demonstrators\nduring the early days of the revolution reappear again later in the film,\ntransformed into the very antithesis of the revolutionary ideal — shapeless\nblack garments forced upon women in the name of religion. In Marjane’s first\nencounter with a dead body — a hand of a neighbour buried under the rubble of\nan apartment block — her anguished young face morphs almost imperceptibly into\nMunch’s Scream<\/em> even as it rapidly\nfades from the scene. One nanosecond longer and the appearance of this much\nover-used icon would have been jarring. The brevity of the image left one with\na lingering echo rather than a staccato shout-out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Watching the film one day after the announcement of\nelections in Malaysia, it was inevitable that certain things about Marjane’s\nIran struck me. An professor teaching an art history class uses a visual of\nBotticelli’s “Venus Rising” which has been blackened out by the\ncensors’ marker. The Guardians of the Revolution, thugs in uniform, arrest\ncouples for holding hands. The manufacturing of enemies, within and without the\ncountry, in order to secure political power.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

There is a scene soon after the fall of the Shah, as the country prepares for elections. Uncle Anoush, is hopeful that Iranians will vote wisely, convinced that the people will fight for their freedom. We know how 99% of his countrymen voted, and its impact on his life, and that of his country. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

~~~ <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First Published: 14.02.2008 on Kakiseni <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Persepolis is based on the best-selling graphic novel of the same name by Marjane Satrapi. Directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, featuring the voices of Danielle Darrieux and Cathering Deneuve, it won the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival, along with a clutch of other international awards and nomination. Like the book, the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"iawp_total_views":7,"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,3540,3541,3569],"tags":[223,3643,49,3644],"language":[7523],"writer":[7615],"class_list":["post-27260","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-film","category-literature","category-review","tag-film","tag-marjane-satrapi","tag-review","tag-vincent-paronnaud","language-english","writer-kathy-rowland"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27260","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27260"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27260\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39107,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27260\/revisions\/39107"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27260"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27260"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27260"},{"taxonomy":"language","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/language?post=27260"},{"taxonomy":"writer","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/myartmemoryproject.com\/ms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/writer?post=27260"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}