Chris Knipp Writing: Movies, Politics, Art


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PostPosted: Thu Oct 11, 2007 3:14 pm 
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A revolutionary girlhood from graphic novel to animation

Satrapi's by now quite famous four-volume Persepolis graphic novel series (2000-2003) recounts her life to age 24, when she left Iran with her family's blessing for the last time and went to live in France (1994). Collaborating with her Paris studio-mate, cartoonist and video artist Vincent Paronnaud and a stellar French cast, she has faithfully and brilliantly transferred her books to a 95-minute black and white animated film. The French version was shown at closing night of the New York Film Festival 2007. Chiara Mastroianni is the voice for the adolescent and adult Marjane; her mother Catherine Deneuve is her mother; Danielle Darrieux her feisty, dead-honest and totally irreverent grandmother. An English-language soundtrack is under way and Sean Penn, Iggy Pop, and Gena Rowlands are aboard for it. The word on the street is that this more handmade animated film may give Pixar's Ratatouille a run for the Best Animation Oscar this year.

Persepolis has a lot going for it. It's the portrait of an unusual girlhood. Marjane grew up in a progressive ruling class family. An uncle went to Leningrad to study Marxism-Leninism. As a little girl she picked up the radicalism, and had some of her grandmother's genes for outspokenness. She soon gave up supporting the Shah and walked around the house calling for revolution. She tried on ideas constantly, posing as a prophet, then a dictator. God and Karl Marx vied for her affections. Her communist uncle was hopeful that the revolution would grow democratic; but while he was imprisoned under the Shah, he was executed under the mullahs. And of course all the girls must take the veil. Again Marji, as she's called, is obstreperous, defying the pious lies of her chador-wearing teachers. The war with Iraq causes terrible disruption: the house next door is destroyed.

For her safety in this desperate moment for the country Marji's parents send her to Vienna (1983), where she goes to the French lycée (she had been attending a French school all her life). It was a lonely and difficult time; she grows up physically (which happens in seconds in the animation--an eye-catching sequence) and has a boyfriend who turns out to be gay and another who sleeps with another girl. This rejection makes her so despondent she becomes homeless and ill and almost dies. She goes back and tries to live in Iran. This is a time when the upper class is living a double life, constantly hiding alcohol and parties and music. (Even as a child Marji bought bootleg heavy metal; she switched quickly to punk.) Attending college, she meets a man named Reza and marries him--but the union is a mistake, which her grandmother cheerfully dismisses. "The first marriage is just practice," she says. A bored, doodling psychiatrist listens to her troubles and tells her she's depressed, and gives her some pills--which seem to make her more depressed.

Eventually the time comes when Marjane is in effect ordered to leave the country for her own good. She went to France. That's the end of the books and the film.

Art Spiegelman's Pulitzer Prize-winning graphic novel Maus was an inspiration for Satrapi's work, as well as a French comics artist named David B., whose style she imitated at first. The collaboration with Paronnaud came about after they shared a studio.

The animated Persepolis has gotten rave reviews in France, and shared the Cannes festival Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas' Silent Light.

One wonders whether Bush administration threats against Iran will arouse US audience interest in this new film, which skillfully combines a young woman's coming of age story with contemporary political history. There are no flaws, really, in Persepolis. Its use of image and voice and music is terrific.

There are some criticisms. The film adds nothing to the story line that was not in the books. Indeed it must omit a lot of the daily details some feel are what makes the graphic novels worthwhile. And when you say this is an "adult" animation, bear in mind that this is "adult" experience alright, but seen simplistically, from the point of view of a child and young adult, not a mature person. It may seem unkind to call Persepolis 'Modern Iran for Dummies,' but that's in a sense what it is. Even though the original drawing style and this animated adaptation are vivid and "graphic," and the film is able to add some more complex backgrounds and shadings not in the books, the look still remains a bare-bones, almost style-neutral one. This is not to say he film hasn't complete technical integrity. But viewers in search of a phantasmagoric visual banquet may stay away.

As noted, the closing night film of the New York Film Festival at Lincoln Center 2007. At the press screening Q&A unfortunately Mastroianni, Darieux and Deneuve could not be present, but Parannaud and Satrapi were articulate and interesting. Satrapi, who seems like such a prig sometimes as a young girl and so full of herself, in person is warm, modest, and appealing. Her excellent English will enable her to be as hands-on with the English version as she was with the French one.

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©Chris Knipp. Blog: http://chrisknipp.blogspot.com/.


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