Storyline
After living through the overthrow of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi as a child and losing a beloved family member to political persecution in the aftermath, Marjane spends her early teenage years challenging Islamic authority. Her parents encourage her freedom of thought and desire for self-determination, but fear for her safety under the oppressive regime, so they send Marjane to be educated in Austria. While there, she enjoys the freedoms of the West, but grows disgusted with the cavalier attitudes of other students, who take their rights for granted. She struggles with the feeling that she has abandoned her country, having escaped the Iran/Iraq war to live comfortably in Europe while her friends and family suffer. She also confronts prejudice against Iranians from peers who know very little about her culture. After a failed love affair compounds her sense of isolation, she falls into a deep depression and becomes homeless before gaining permission from her parents to return to Iran.
Grown into a young adult with a deep love for her country and culture, Marjane is dismayed to see how much Iran has changed in her absence. The war has ended, but government oppression has increased dramatically. She returns to school, eventually earning a master’s degree in art, but continues to wrestle with the loss of personal liberties under the Islamic regime. Unable to date openly, she rushes into an ill-advised marriage, only to see the relationship fail a few years later. In the end, she realizes that although she doesn’t want to leave her family and homeland, she cannot live in such stifling conditions and must return to the West. With tearful farewells to her family, including her beloved grandmother who died shortly thereafter, she boards a plane to France, where she continues to live and work today.
Artistry
In one of the interviews included on the disc, Satrapi explains that one of her goals for the animation was to maximize the story’s universality so that even though the film depicted events in Iran, it could have wider appeal and avoid being marginalized as an ethnic production. She wanted viewers to be able to identify with her characters so that they would see that the Iranian people are not so very different than people everywhere else; that dictatorships are dictatorships, regardless of the country in which they occur.
To further these goals, and to provide continuity with the graphic novels, Satrapi and co-director/artist Vincent Paronnaud used a stark, high-contrast, black and white style for the animation. Many characters have only slight markers that relate to a specific ethnicity, frequently just the arch of a nose or a hairstyle, and most of the locations, such as Marjane’s childhood home or the streets in Tehran, are presented in such a generic way that they could be a home or city anywhere. In addition, Satrapi and Paronnaud’s frequent use of silhouettes, particularly in political scenes, depict people and soldiers recognizable in any culture. The result of these artistic choices is that it is becomes natural to relate personally to the characters and events and that it is much harder to experience the film simply as the story of something that happened to some other people somewhere else.
To create the animation, a team of artists hand-drew the primary elements with clean lines and pure black or white coloring, while using computer-aided shading and detail in the background to provide rich texture for the scene as a whole. The style is often two-dimensional, especially during dream sequences and stories told by the characters, when depth is frequently created by static elements in front of and behind a moving character. Although images appear simplistic, here less is clearly more. The result is dramatic and effective; Satrapi and Paronnaud are able to convey complex messages through expression and dialogue, filling each scene with layers of meaning. The overall effect is stunning and is responsible for many of the awards and recognitions the film has received.
On The Disc
Like Satrapi’s books, Persepolis is available in French and English versions, both of which are included on the DVD. The dialogue was originally recorded in French, then re-recorded in English. Actresses Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve reprise their respective roles as Marjane and her mother in both versions, but American actors Sean Penn, Iggy Pop, and Gena Rowlands provide the voices of Marjane’s father, her Uncle Anouche, and her grandmother, replacing Simon Abkarian, François Jerosme, and Danielle Darrieux. Each cast does such an excellent job of making the characters their own that some viewers may find it interesting to view both versions of the film. For those who do not speak French, the disc includes English and Spanish subtitles. The film defaults to French, but the simple disc menus make it easy to switch to your preferred language.
The DVD also contains a good variety of special features, including two behind-the-scenes specials that focus on the making of the film, a long one with the artists and French cast, and a shorter one that includes interviews with the English cast. There is also a lengthy press conference from the Cannes Film Festival, several commentaries by the directors and Mastroianni, either on the final version of a scene or on a scene’s development in production, and a handful of previews of other films.
In Conclusion
Persepolis is an important film not only for its visual beauty, but also because it shows how easily a country can change, even when those changes are opposed by its citizens. As an outsider, it is stunning to see how rapidly Iran was transformed from a partially-Westernized and relatively open monarchy to a restrictive, theocratic dictatorship in only a few short years. The country we in the U.S. hear frequently about today through unflattering newspaper and television reports did not exist only 30 years ago. It is hard to imagine how difficult these dramatic changes, especially the extreme restrictions on personal freedom, must be on the populace, many of whom can still remember their lives under the rule of the Shah. By encouraging us to identify with her story and the stories of her parents and friends, Satrapi pulls us into her world and allows us to share the disappointment felt by her and many others when they realized that the long-desired revolution intended to liberate the people was ultimately responsible for their increased subjugation. Although she has gone on to become a successful author and filmmaker, Persepolis shows just how much she had to give up in order to live her dreams. It is a reminder that we who have freedoms must guard them carefully to avoid their loss. On the other hand, things that change quickly may change quickly again. Perhaps the people of Iran will, in the next 30 years, be able to create a government that will preserve not only their culture and their religion, but their personal freedoms as well. Maybe then Satrapi, who has not been back to Iran since her first graphic novel was released in 2000, can finally go home again.