New Year's Countdown...of Excellence: 2 - Persepolis (2000's selection)

2
Persepolis
2007, d. Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paonnaud - Tubi

The Story (in two paragraphs or less)

Based off her graphic novel memoir, Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's animated autobiographical perspective of growing up in Iran from the late 70's through the early 90's as the revolution overthrows the shah, but the democratically elected government institutes a corrosive, violent fundamentalist rule and in the mid-80s a western-fueled, meaningless war with Iraq doubles the danger.  Fearing for her safety, Marjane's parents send her off to Austria, but being alone and foreign in Austria proves to have its own harrowing challenges which Marjane barely survives.

Returning home to post-war Iran, Marjane, faces a great depression following her time in Europe but also learns the new normal, a brutal patriarchy where women are subjugated and arts and culture are repressed, is made only marginally tolerable by the support of her family.  Raised by revolutionary parents and a delightfully liberal grandmother who taught Marjane about ethics, integrity, and her family history in fighting for freedom of the people, Marjane cannot shake her political ideals and must permanently leave Iran.

 
What did I think I was in for?
I had a hard time figuring out what to watch for the 2000s.  The best of lists I was coming across featured a lot of films I had either already seen or films that were not easily accessible.  I was going to try Volver, which would be my first exposure to Pedro Almodovar's works but couldn't find it.  Dogville was my main back-up choice but it's not currently streaming.  One of my film podcasters is obsessed with Apichatpong Weerasethakul, so I was hoping to check out Syndromes and a Century which made many lists for the best of the decade, which, again, was unavailable.    I finally decided go with Yi Yi (A one and a two) a much celebrated Taiwanese film from Edward Yang which is on the Criterion Channel, but it's 3 hours long and time was running short.  I came across Persepolis on a list and found it readily available to view, and it was time....

Back when Persepolis came out it was quite resoundingly heralded and garnered an Academy Award nomination (among its many other awards and nominations).  But I already heard of Persepolis as a graphic novel, which had been widely heralded years before the film.  I was early into my comic book reviewing/ amateur journalism at the time and I generally was reading and seeing almost anything noteworthy as related to comics in mass media.  For some reason, I didn't manage to catch either the film or the graphic novel at the time, likely because I was somewhat hesitant about how challenging it would be to me. My misunderstanding was that it was solely about Iran in the midst of the Iran-Iraq war, which seemed daunting/   I had always intended to catch up on both.

What did I get out of it?
First, the animation is gorgeous.  It uses stark black and white for it's figures but shades of grey for settings and backgrounds.  It's very stiking, and visually the figures pop.  There are moments of colour (as it's told as a retrospective, the modern day is in colour) that are pretty, but you really want to get back to the pop of black and white.  The figures are simplistic, but very distinctive in their caricature.

I don't have much knowledge of Iran beyond brief conversations with ex-pats who I have met or what little has seeped into pop culture (much of which is American propeganda).  This film gives a very basic, like talking-to-a-child level of simplistic understanding of the tumultuous history of the country in the 1900s.   It very much is appreciated, the bluntness to which it's detailed.  There's no doubt intricacies that are lost in such a simplistic addressing but it's the right way to convey it to a world not otherwise versed in it. 

Through Satrapi's first-hand and related familial experiences one gets a keen sense of what Iranian culture could have been, what the promise was following the overthrow of the shah, versus what it became.  The film, I should note, never mentions "Islam" or "muslim" once.  It really does want to be a more universal parable.  It presents a very "if it can happen here" story, which made me think what if the Christian fundamentalist rose in power in the US and started baring down on what women could or couldn't do, what music, media and culture could be created and consumed, what the youth could or couldn't do, and one realizes that there are movements (and machinations) that seek to do just that.

In the nightmare of having one's liberties restricted, the alternatives are abandoning one's home, one's status to go elsewhere as an outsider, to be viewed differently, treated differently, to feel differently.  With Marjane living alone as a teen in Vienna, she felt guilty for the liberties and frivolities she had, knowing only some of what families and friends were facing back in Iran.  But the realities of Vienna, and the people who live there, were very different from her own, and it created a barrier that drove her away from people or found her pushing people away.  

Do I think it's a classic?
I do, actually.  Animation was, I think, the perfect way to present this story, to find the humour, the emotion, and to make it all relatable in a way that live action would have instead put up barriers to investing.  The animation also allows for more dramatic and artistic interpretations to the horrors experienced, using abstraction to make things more potent.   

Did I like watching this?
I did.  It was captivating.  I wasn't expecting it to be so deeply personal a journey, and following Marjane from her childhood to her early 20's with the backdrop of Iranian history, it's hard not to care about her, to the point that I wanted it to keep going, to keep knowing Satrapi's story.

Would I watch it again?
Certainly. It's a beautiful movie.  As difficult as it is, there's still sweetness, love and humour amidst all the pain and upset.