Took Joseph (11) to see this, and although it's not really aimed at youngsters, he really enjoyed it. I think it would make a great end of term screening for all the copy-pirate teachers out there, although you may want to give parents a heads up on the references to torture, execution and scenes containing scary nuns.
Based on Iranian expatriate Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel series of the same name, Persepolis chronicles the authors youth and young womanhood. The origional comic book drawings make a powerful transition to big screen animation, and I think this might be the first time Joseph has not complained at being subjected to a black and white film. We watched the US (i.e. English) dub, with Iggy Pop as Uncle Anouche (the most optimistic Marxist-Leninist in film history) and Gena Rowlands (playing everyone's dream Grandmother) being the stand out characters and performances.
The story traces Marji's upbringing amongst a progressive, well-off family in Tehran. Her interpretation of the Islamic revloution, its impact on her family and their expectations are covered, as is the popular election of Khomeini and the Iran-Iraq war which Saddam Hussein launched a year later. A couple of years later, Marji is sent by her family to school in Vienna to escape the ongoing conflict, where she begins to try out identities and date boys. She later returns to Tehran, attends university, battles depression, gets married, and tries to live a reasonable life around a restrictive regime, and eventually leaves for Paris.
It's a very honest, human story, and Satrapi doesn't shy from representing herself as unsympathetic at times. The film will suffer from being the only movie dealing with Iranian history and politics that most of its audience will have ever seen: Satrapi's story is brilliantly told, but can't hope (and doesn't presume) to carry the weight of representing 20 years of the complex story of a nation.
Comments