Persepolis is a 2007 animated film based on Marjane Satrapi's autobiographical graphic novel of the same name. The film was written and directed by Satrapi with Vincent Paronnaud. The story follows a young girl as she comes of age against the backdrop of the Iranian Revolution. The story ends with Marjane as a 22-year-old expatriate. The title is a reference to the historic city of Persepolis.
The film won the Jury Prize at the 2007 Cannes Film Festival and was released in France and Belgium on June 27. In her acceptance speech, Satrapi said "Although this film is universal, I wish to dedicate the prize to all Iranians." The film was also nominated for the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature.
The film was released in the United States on December 25, 2007 and in the United Kingdom on April 24, 2008.
Plot
The film begins in an airport where Marjane Satrapi is unable to board a plane to Iran. Sitting and smoking a cigarette, she remembers her life as a girl in 1979 with Marji at the age of 10, a young girl with dreams of being a prophet and an emulator of Bruce Lee. (The film is black and white during her memories). At this time, the general uprising against the US-backed Shah of Iran begins, and her middle-class family participates with high hopes for a more just society. Meanwhile, Marji attempts to participate in her age's point of view, whether it is threatening the child of an unpopular government official, or competing for the greater childish prestige of having a relative who has been a political prisoner the longest time, such as her communist Uncle Anoosh. During this time, she and a group of friends attempt to attack a young boy whose father killed Communists, but is stopped by her mother. That night, God appears before her to teach her about forgiveness, and about how she should not take justice into her own hands.
Unfortunately, the hopes of the family are profoundly disappointed when Islamic Fundamentalists win the ensuing elections and force Iranian society into its own kind of repressive state, which ranges from forcing women to dress modestly (including the Hijab,) to rearresting and executing Anoosh for his political beliefs. Profoundly disillusioned, Marji rejects her prophetic aspirations before God and tries with her family to fit into the reality of the intolerant regime. Even as both the horrors of the Iran-Iraq war and blatant injustices occur, such as an unqualified government appointed hospital administrator refusing to help a critically ill relative go abroad for medical treatment and thus precipitating his death, the family tries to find some solace in secret parties where they can enjoy simple pleasures the government has outlawed, such as alcohol. However, as she grows up, Marji refuses to stay out of trouble, secretly buying Western heavy metal music on the black market, wearing unorthodox clothing such as a denim jacket (which reads, of all things, "Punk is not Dead",) celebrating punk rock with a Michael Jackson button, or openly rebutting a teacher's lies about the abuses of the government.
Fearing her arrest for her outspokenness, Marji's parents send her to a school in Vienna, Austria where she could have safety and plenty. Unfortunately, Marji feels intolerably isolated in a foreign land surrounded by annoyingly superficial people who take their freedoms and peace for granted while making her feel ashamed of being Iranian. While in Austria, she starts to smoke Hashish. Her shame of being an Iranian culminates in a passionate love affair with a debonair native that traumatically ends on her eighteenth birthday when she discovers him cheating on her. Marji falls into a deep clinical depression that drives her into homelessness where she nearly dies of bronchitis before she is rescued off the streets. During this time, God, and the spirit of Karl Marx, appear before her and encourage her to go on living.
Eventually, Marji returns to Iran with her family's permission and hopes that the conclusion of the war would mean an improved life there. After her natural depression over the state of affairs in Iran is misdiagnosed as nervous breakdown (and given drugs that only deepen her ennui), she finds that Iranian society is more tyrannized than ever with atrocities like mass executions for political beliefs and petty religious absurdities and hypocrisies that make living as both an art student and a woman intolerable. At one point, Marji openly confronts the blatant sexist double standard in a school forum on public morality that singles out women. To cope, Marji resorts to personal survival tactics, such as falsely accusing a man of making a pass at her to avoid being arrested for wearing make up (which disgusts her beloved grandmother for being so craven) and marrying her boyfriend (over her mother's feminist objections) to avoid scrutiny by the religious police (though, in the former case, the man in question was eyeing her purse with the presumable intention of stealing it.)
Eventually, as her marriage falls apart, things come to a head when a secret party is raided by the police which results in a friend being killed trying to escape. After these incidents and her divorce that is encouraged by her grandmother, the family decides that Marji must leave the country again, and this time permanently, to avoid her being targeted by the authorities as a political dissident. Marji agrees, and her Grandmother dies soon after her departure.
Back to present day, Marji once again is unable to return to Iran, and she takes a taxi from the airport. When the driver asks where she is from, she sighs, "Iran". Her final memory is of her grandmother telling her how she put jasmine in her brassiere to allow her to smell fresh every day.
Technique
The film is black and white in the style of the original graphic novels. The "present day" scenes are shown in color, while sections of the historic narrative resemble a shadow theater show. To help with the translation of the comic to animation, art director and executive producer Marc Jousset came up with the design. The animation is credited to the Perseprod studio and was created by two specialized studios: Je Suis Bien Content and Pumpkin 3D.
Cast
The voice actors in the original French version include:
- Chiara Mastroianni as teenage and adult Marjane
- Catherine Deneuveas Mother
- Danielle Darrieux as Grandmother
- Simon Abkarian as Father
The film was released in Canada with the original French soundtrack and English subtitles; the US release was redubbed in English for some locations. Mastroianni and Deneuve reprise their roles in English, but Father is played by Sean Penn, Uncle Anouche by Iggy Pop and Grandmother by Gena Rowlands. Laurie Metcalf also has a small role as the mother of a young teenage boy.
Responses
Critical reception
The film received substantially positive reviews. As of July 16 , 2008 , the review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes reported that 96% of critics gave the film positive reviews, based on 115 reviews. Metacritic reported the film had an average score of 90 out of 100, based on 31 reviews.
Time magazine's Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #6. Corliss praised the film, calling it “a coming-of-age tale, that manages to be both harrowing and exuberant.”
Iranian reactions
The film has drawn complaints from the Iranian government. Even before its debut at the Cannes Film Festival, the government-connected organisation Iran Farabi Foundation sent a letter to the French embassy in Tehran stating, "This year the Cannes Film Festival, in an unconventional and unsuitable act, has chosen a movie about Iran that has presented an unrealistic face of the achievements and results of the glorious Islamic Revolution in some of its parts"
Despite such objections, the Iranian cultural authorities relented in February 2008 and allowed limited screenings of the film in Tehran, albeit with half a dozen scenes censored due to sexual content.
Thai reactions
In June 2007, the film was dropped from the lineup of the Bangkok International Film Festival. Festival director Chattan Kunjara na Ayudhya stated, "I was invited by the Iranian embassy to discuss the matter and we both came to mutual agreement that it would be beneficial to both countries if the film was not shown" and "It is a good movie in artistic terms, but we have to consider other issues that might arise here."
Lebanese reactions
Persepolis was initially banned in Lebanon after some clerics found it to be "offensive to Iran and Islam." The ban was later revoked after an outcry in Lebanese intellectual and political circles.
School controversy
A group of over 250 parents from the Northshore School District in the United States objected to obscene content in the movie and graphic novel, and lobbied to discontinue it as part of the curriculum. The Curriculum Materials Adoption Committee felt that "other educational goals — such as that children should not be sheltered from what the board and staff called “disturbing” themes and content — outweighed the crudeness and parental prerogative"
Reviews
Top ten lists
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