Persepolis

Plot synopsis:
At the airport, Marjane is unable to board a plane to Iran. She then takes a seat and smokes a cigarette. She reflects on her childhood, full of politically driven conflict. As a young girl, Marji lived in Tehran and wanted to be a prophet and a disciple of Bruce Lee. Her childhood ambition is the general uprising against the Shah of Iran. Her middle-class family participates in all the rallies and protests. Marji and a group of friends attempt to attack a young boy named Ramen, whose father, a member of SAVAK, killed Communists for no particular reason. One day, Marji's Uncle Anoush arrives to have dinner with the family after recently being released from his nine-year sentence in prison. Uncle Anoush inspires Marji with his stories of his life on the run from the government, a result of rebelling. Political enemies cease fighting and elections for a new leading power commence. Marji's family's situation does not improve as they are profoundly upset when Islamic Fundamentalists win the elections with 99.99% of the vote and start repressing Iranian society. The government forces women to dress modestly, including wearing a head scarf, and Anoush is rearrested and executed for his political beliefs. Profoundly disillusioned, Marji tries, with her family, to fit into the reality of the intolerant regime. The Iran-Iraq war breaks out and Marji sees for herself the horrors of death and destruction. The Iranian government begins implementing ridiculous laws that create blatant injustices. Marji witnesses her father threatened by rifle-wielding teenaged government officials and watches her critically ill uncle die after an unqualified government-appointed hospital administrator refuses to allow him to travel abroad for medical treatment. The family tries to find solace in secret parties where they enjoy simple pleasures the government has outlawed, including alcohol. As she grows up, Marji begins a life of over-confidence. She refuses to stay out of trouble, secretly buying Western heavy metal music, notably Iron Maiden, on the black market, wearing unorthodox clothing such as a denim jacket, celebrating punk rock and other Western music sensations like Michael Jackson, and openly rebuts a teacher's lies about the abuses of the government.
Fearing her arrest for her outspokenness, Marji's parents send her to a French lycée in Vienna, Austria, where she can be safe and free to express herself. She lives with Catholic nuns and is upset with their discriminatory and judgmental behavior. Marji doesn't make any friends, and ultimately feels intolerably isolated in a foreign land surrounded by annoyingly superficial people who take their freedom for granted. As the years go by, Marji is thrown out of her temporary shelter for insulting a nun and is driven out into the streets. Marji continues to go from house to house until ending up in the house of Frau Dr. Schloss, a retired philosophy teacher. One night, her grandmother's voice resonates, telling her to stay true to herself as she leaves a party after lying about her nationality, telling an acquaintance that she was French. Her would-be lover reveals his homosexuality after a failed attempt at sex with Marji. She engages in a passionate love affair with Markus, a debonair native, which ends when she discovers him cheating on her. Marji is accused of stealing Frau Dr. Schloss' brooch, she becomes angered and leaves. She spends the day on a park bench, reflecting upon how cruel Markus was to her. She discovers that she has nowhere to go. She lives on the street for a few months. Eventually, she becomes ill and contracts bronchitis, and almost dies.
Marji recovers in a Viennese hospital and returns to Iran with her family's permission and hopes that the conclusion of the war will improve their quality of life. After spending several days wasting her time watching television, Marji falls into a clinical depression. She attempts suicide by overdosing on medication. She falls asleep and dreams of God and Karl Marx reminding her what is important and encouraging her to live. Her determination is renewed and she begins enjoying life again. Marji attends university classes and parties. She enters into a relationship with a fellow student. Marji notices that her situation has gradually worsened and that Iranian society is more tyrannized than ever. Mass executions for political beliefs and petty religious absurdities have become common, much to Marji's dismay. She and her boyfriend are caught holding hands and their parents are forced to pay a fine to avoid their lashing. Despite Iranian society making living as a student and a woman intolerable, Marji remains rebellious. She resorts to personal survival tactics to protect herself, such as falsely accusing a man of insulting her to avoid being arrested for wearing makeup and marrying her boyfriend to avoid scrutiny by the religious police. Her grandmother is disappointed by Marji's behavior and berates Marji, telling her that both her grandfather and her uncle died supporting freedom and innocent people and that she should never forsake them or her family by succumbing to the repressive environment of Iran. Marji, realizing her mistake, fixes her mistakes, and her grandmother is pleased to hear that Marji openly confronted the blatant sexist double standard in her university's forum on public morality.
The police raid a party. While the women are arrested, the men escape on the rooftops. One of the men, Nima, unwittingly hesitates before one of them jumps, consequently falling to his death. Her family decides that Marji, after her friend's death and her divorce, leave the country permanently to avoid being targeted by the Iranian authorities as a political dissident. Marji's mother forbids Marji from returning and Marji reluctantly agrees. Marji states that this would be the last time she saw her grandmother who died not long after her departure. Marji is shown collecting her luggage and getting into a taxi. As the taxi drives away from the south terminal of Paris-Orly Airport, the narrative cuts back to the present day. The driver asks Marji where she is from and she replies "Iran," showing that she's kept the promise she made to Anoush and her grandmother that she would remember where she came from and that she would always stay true to herself. She recalls her final memory of her grandmother telling her how she placed jasmine in her brassiere to smell lovely every day.

Tags: comedy, avant garde, murder, flashback, psychedelic, autobiographical, humor, philosophical, romantic, historical, storytelling

Review:
Traditionally animated in black and white flashbacks, it tells the story of a French-speaking woman's childhood and young adulthood in Tehran, Iran, and in Vienna during the 1980s and '90s.Marjane Satrapi grew up in a family of revolutionaries against the Shah's regime and the Islamic government that subsequently took hold, and the film literally illustrates her feelings and thought processes as a little girl, following her as the government control in Iran got more and more strict.
Educated in a French school, she and her family are rapidly alienated from the so-called revolution; she is sent to Vienna to continue her education, falls in with a group of punks and eventually returns both depressed and disillusioned to Teheran where, with other university students, she must submit to the rule of extreme Islamists.The story covers a great deal of ground from the point of view of a young pro-Western culture radical, and is told with humor and intelligence.
She laughs at herself as much as at the semi-lunatic Guards of the Revolution.Satrapi's hold on reality is much strengthened under the influence of her highly honest grandmother who teaches her not co compromise, not to betray and not to give in.This is no fairy tale with flying horses and beautiful princesses, but a serious, unsentimental and sometimes brutally honest film covering, among other events, the story of the millions of Iranians and Iraqis who died in a now forgotten seven year war around the Persian Gulf..
Persepolis tells the amazing story of a young girl growing up in Iran around the time of the Islamic Revolution.
Using a unique style of animation, that closely follows the style of the graphic novel, the audience is pulled into a world that is much different than the world they are used to.Marjane's story is often times humorous and often times heart breaking without resorting to heavy handed sentimentalism that is often seen in Hollywood movies.
However, the life with the fundamentalist in the government is repressive and she leaves her country again to live in France."Persepolis" is an interesting animation where the contemporary history of Iran is disclosed through the eyes of the lead character.
With the help of artist Vincent Paronnaud, the stylized drawings have become a motion picture which has already conquered critics and won several awards (the Jury Prize in Cannes being one of them).The film's strict adherence to the book's style makes for simple but powerful viewing: the simple pictures ensure the story doesn't need to be filtered, but can be understood right away, while the use of black and white provide the images with a strength that would otherwise be missing.
The choice of animation proves to be particularly effective in a most unusual choice for this kind of film, namely fantasy sequences: there is a hilarious moment, for instance, when Marjane, during a stay in Vienna, looks back on her disappointment in love and sees her ex-boyfriend as a depraved freak; live-action would have ruined that scene, undoubtedly.
As seen in Clint Eastwoood's Iwo Jima double bill, the line between "heroes" and "villains" is very thin, and the film never misses the opportunity to show how bad our own society can be: Marjane ends up hating Europe more than her home-country, and at the beginning a flashback shows the British government's role in manipulating Iranian politics for money's sake.
In the end, this movie is far from being a movie about Iran, but only tells an individual life, crying for freedom in a country were a woman can't reach it, but transfigured by personal memories and a strong animated point of view, that uses all the techniques and styles a comic-book adaptation could offer..
In a individually visualized way this animation picture shows Marjane Satrapis personal biography and gives you an idea about the historical background of the Iran and the way of living in this part of the world.
It's a movie that creates believable souls, not characters, whose laughs and tears, triumphs and tragedies ultimately become your own, because its main character follows a quest that all of us can identify with: finding our place in the world.Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran in the last days of the Shah.
No amount of live action, however well done, will be able to render so starkly the brutality of the Shah's troops, so lovingly and so beautifully the minor irritances of first love, and the way that the tragedy of heartbreak segues into the childish petulances of resentment, and the freedom and bewilderment of a life adrift."Persepolis" is a wonderful, humane and bittersweet film, simply put, an experience to be treasured..
Movies don't come much more boldly original or stylistically unique than the animated hit "Persepolis," an autobiographical tale of life under a totalitarian regime as seen through the eyes of a spirited Iranian girl named Marjane Satrapi, who, after immigrating to France, wrote the graphic novel upon which the film (co-directed by Satrapi herself) is based.
Unfortunately, as is so often the case with revolutions, the new regime - in this case, the fundamentalist Islamic Republic led by the Ayatollah Khomeini- turned out to be even more cruel, dictatorial and repressive than the one that got overthrown.As the central character in the movie, Marjane is both an observer of and a participant in the many events that play out in the story, as any number of her own relatives and neighbors fall victim to the systematic purging of all those who refuse to adhere to the present regime's newly enacted draconian measures (women must go out in burkas and head scarves, lovers are not allowed to hold hands in public, etc.) - while those who remain behind live in constant fear that they will find themselves in jail or up in front of a firing squad for a simple, perhaps even inadvertent, code violation.
Yet, despite all the bleakness and repression, hope and freedom of thought somehow miraculously flourish and prevail in the human heart, as exemplified by Marjane who refuses to yield her rebellious spirit (she buys bootleg Iron Maiden CDs from hawkers on the street) to the forces that would suppress and imprison it.In terms of style, "Persepolis" relies on old-school cell drawings rather than computer graphics for its animation.
Persepolis is a lovingly,hand drawn animated feature film from France, that tells the story of a young girl growing up in Iran,the daughter of left wing revolutionary parents,during the Islamic revolution.
It is a good way of animating because not only does it visually engage but ti also makes the material more meaningful as well.Persepolis is not an easy sell on the face of it but the reality is that it is a charming and really well delivered personal story that also plays out the modern history of Iran as a broad, inescapable backdrop to Marji's life (which of course it is).
Rather than a film exposing the tyranny of the imams - though there is a bit of that - Persepolis turned out to be the story of how official repression - whether by the Palevi Shahs or by the revolutionary imams - seriously disrupted the upper middle class life of an Iranian girl and her extended family.
The film skillfully moves through about 20 years of her life during which Iran underwent major repressive changes.I don't know whether the writer (Marjane Satrapi) purposefully westernized the character or whether the depiction is accurate (my guess is that it's mostly the latter).
The movie feels like it ends a bit prematurely without any further info, but you can read about the real life Marjane on the Internet.It's a drama-oriented animated film and I'd say it's definitely worth watching..
Adapted from a four-volume graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi in the style of Spiegleman's Maus, Persepolis is a sensitive animé about a young girl's coming of age during political and social revolution.
Using high contrast black and white hand-drawn animation in shifting styles, the film unleashes a torrent of memories of people, places, and events from Marjane's life that reveal the universal emotions of loss and loneliness that accompany exile.Told in voice-over and flashbacks, Satrapi recounts her tortuous physical and emotional journey over the last twenty years in a mixture of memories, history, and imagination.
Adjusting her veil, Marjane walks away and the screen turns from color to black and white as the young woman reflects on her life as a child in the early days of the Iranian Revolution after the Western-supported Shah has been deposed in favor of an Islamic fundamentalist regime.
The movie-makers paint an image of a normal country, just like all others under the influence of the West, and filled with people trying to get along with the oppressive theocracy that still rules there.In the center is Marjane, a young Iranian girl from an intellectual family.
It is not difficult to understand the growing number of accolades that are being bestowed upon Persepolis, directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi, which is based upon the graphic novel of the same title by Marjane, as it recounts in autobiographical terms, the growing pains of the author in a world that had undergone tremendous change in the last few decades.Yes, not many films take on the political and social context of Iran head on, and what more doing so in very acute, straightforward, no holds barred terms.
Rather, it's a long hard look at the oppression and changes for the relative worse, and summarizes quite succinctly the turmoil that its ordinary citizenry had to endure in their day to day lives, but yet, always have that glimmer of hope to cling onto, and the joys of taking pleasure in the simple things in life.The story is told through the perspective of author Marjane Satrapi from the time she's a young child, and life as she knew back then forms the baseline where changes are measured against.
With Persepolis, the background of the Iranian war and even growing up in a state of "terror" (or, for a big chunk, feeling the guilt of being away from one's home as this goes on), isn't necessarily the main focus.It's much more universal in essential terms, which is why I as a 23 year old white guy connected with it practically as strongly as I did to the quintessential coming-of-age film The 400 Blows.
And she has to still cope with being a girl, then a teen girl, and finally a young adult.It's all the more harrowing because Marjane Satrapi, the author of the original comics and the basis for the tale, goes for three things: 1) she wants to stay true to a subjective (but potent) view of Iranian society, of the impact of the war and the Shah and a existential crisis coming this way and that, 2) while doing this she puts in little stinging bars of satire, with Marjane as an adolescent donning "Punk is Not Ded" on her back and sneakers, the "puppet" presentation with the story of the Shah, and other smaller touches that come at surprising moments, and 3) enlivening it with an animation technique that's simple in characterization (smiles drawn with small lines, contours very concrete), but with the abstractions, the things that make animation "Pop", she makes some distinct, cool challenges to stir the pot (just watch when Marjarie and the other girls run from some cops after a party is busted, a character doesn't make the jump, and the view stays on the moon and sky, straightforward like a kids book).And, as well as with these three, you get the bond between the little girl and her grandmother, and it's not contrived or with the granny some super-being of sentiment or too wacky (that's left to the woman in Vienna with the retard dog).
The flick has autobiographical influences and tells the story of a young girl growing up in a country filled with tension, shattered by war and disintegrated by many revolutions and changing governments.The movie shows us the happy sides of the life of an innocent child, the tragical sides of a young girl leaving her country in despair, the courageous side as the girl fights for her dreams and her freedom, the philosophical and moral sides as she meets many old and wise personalities and learns a lot about Islam and Catholic religion, anarchy and communism, disco music and heavy metal, the melancholic sides as she faces death and isolation and the sides of uncertainty in the very end.The movie is highly educational and very interesting from a cultural and historical point of view but the main force are its vivid characters that are precisely and with much feeling becoming alive in this "avantgarde" comic strap.
The story is based on the real life of Marjane Satrapi, so the film starts with the little Marjane as well: the viewer will first see everything with the eyes of the young Marjane, later as she grows up, she (and the viewer as well) will become aware of the brutality, the crimes and the violence of the war Iraq-Iran and of the revolution, since some of her relatives had been arrested and killed by the government.
Winning the Jury Prize at Cannes in 2007 and even getting a surprising Oscar nod in the Best Animated Feature category, PERSEPOLIS is more of a dramatic biography of one girl's life as she runs away from her country and her Iranian heritage.Most Americans are probably used to animated films being light, funny, or a combination of the two (thinking along the lines of FINDING NEMO).
Alone and lost in a world that doesn't understand her, Marjane must learn to live her life while worrying about what's happening back home (she leaves Iran at the behest of her parents and travels around Europe, going to school and working odd jobs).The gripping story is told all from Marjanes point of view, making the viewer care tremendously about this young girl as she creeps into womanhood.
"Persepolis" is a visual delight, a thought-provoking, powerfully moving real story of an Iranian girl (Marjane Satrapi) and an entire nation divided by war and intolerance during the hard times of the Islamic Revolution.
Marji's intelligences shows the hypocrisy of the Islamic regime throughout her live, how she is a permanent outsider and how a young girl/woman longs to be free.Persepolis is a story about growing and the writer directors Vincent Paronnaud and Satrapi do show with great effect the impact of the revolution and the war, the pointless nature of the Iran-Iraq war, the politics and society of Iran and most importantly the personal and human drama involving Marji and her family.
This story of the life of an Iranian girl growing up into the oppression of her home country seems like it would be about that, but somehow this film manages to be about nothing despite so much going on.
Co director Marjanne Satrapi, born in 1969 into a progressive middle class Iranian family, tells how as a young girl she witnessed the fall of the shah, the coming of the Islamic regime, the brutal Iran-Iraq war, how she was sent during the mid 1980s to Austria by her family, where she saw first hand some of the nihilistic life style of European youth, how there she fell into drugs and almost die after a doomed love affair, how she returned to Iran in the early 90s, enrolling in the university and getting into an ill fated marriage before going to exile to France.
Well, i'm intending to write a piece which deserves the labeling "in a nutshell": Despite the nearly-impossible-to-deny Sharply strong points, say the amazing and exciting story-telling, marvelous (and even considerable as a revolutionary ) animation, and admirable sarcastic yet hurting humor, and literally many more, there's a "Climax" laying there: As a 20 years old still-living-in-there Iranian, i must admit more-than-98-percent accuracy of this narration...Yes, scenes you are watching while feeling secured ,and probably wondering if all the events described can be really true, are parts of my every-day seen...there's nothing exaggerated in there to your surprise, and to my sorrow, there are a lot of delicate (and again hurting) points that i believe is beyond the understanding (meaning being able to make them out ) of people who have not Felt and Lived the bitterly horrible of this atmosphere...This is a perfect and Highly must-see movie, that not only gives you the pleasure of watching a really Real art, but also makes you aware of "what Really is going on...", which left me with this seemingly unanswerable question that: should i really be happy about release of this movie or not....
Growing up amid wars and repression in 1970s and 1980s Iran proves challenging for a free-spirited girl in this animated drama based on the real life experiences of co-director Marjane Satrapi.
Poignant coming-of-age story of a precocious and outspoken young Iranian girl that begins during the Islamic Revolution.The graphic novel "Persepolis" was very widely read.
Co-directed by Marjane Satrapi, who based this on her experiences as a young girl growing up in Iran, it tells a story about the struggle to find one's identity in a rapidly changing world.
Iranian expatriate Marjane Satrapi's '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).
Persepolis is a very original, creative, animated story about the coming of age of a young middle-class woman in Iran.
The story is done in flashbacks and most of the animation is in black and white except at the beginning and the end of the film when the narrator is speaking in the present.Persepolis allows us to view Iran from the perspective of a very sophisticated, middle-class family in Tehran, specifically the childhood, adolescence and young adulthood of the film's scenarist, Marjane Satrapi.
*Contains semi-spoilers: Summarizes part of the plot*Based on Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel of the same name, "Persepolis" is an animated autobiographical film that tells the story of a young Marjane growing up during the turmoil of the Iranian Revolutionary War in the early '80's and '90s.