Persepolis
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Movie Reviews of Persepolis
Movie Review: not as great as the book
Summary: 4 Stars
"Persepolis" has the distinction of being one of the four or five books I've read and raved about BEFORE they were turned into acclaimed films. Just in case anyone's wondering.
This film is certainly above average, but I don't think it can touch the two graphic novels.
I'm not sure why that is, though. The same tone and style is used in both, and certainly Marjane Satrapi's creative control infuses both.
But the graphic novel was more episodic: the film bleeds everything together, creating the illusion that it's telling a coherent story. But the viewer becomes vaguely uncomfortable when he realizes the film isn't telling a coherent story, more of a pastiche. The graphic novel could get away with this, but the movie can't.
Also, the book allowed you to pause, think, and digest. Movies, by their nature, do not.
And the inability to let things sink in before you moved forward definitely blunted the effect of some scenes.
There's something I found infuriating, though:
That the publishers of this terrific DVD didn't include Farsi subtitles on the disk. Or any Farsi audio.
Oh, it's popular and well-known in Iran.
Although the authorities won't let you bring it in to the country, everybody just downloads it illegally. But they can't get much out of it because Sony Pictures did not deign to include Farsi subtitles, meaning that much of its power is lost back home. What a shame. Not everybody speaks English!
Movie Review: Fascinating, if not perfect
Summary: 4 Stars
This autobiographical animated feature dealing with the coming of age of a young girl in Iran during the revolutionary period is witty and engaging all way through, as well as technically brilliant, yet its narrow middle class view makes you wince from time to time. 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. Made in engaging black and white, 2D animation, and full of faux naif touches, the problem with this movie is Satrapi's inability to see what happened in Iran outside the narrow view of Iran's westernized middle class. In fact, the working class of Iran is virtually absent from the movie. And her personal complaints (about how her right to consume trash culture from the west was infringed) seems petty and trivial (to her credit, she does realize this from time to time, as when she meets an old childhood friend, a crippled veteran from the war). The film ugliest bit is when the girl's mother complains that the new administrator in a hospital in newly revolutionary Iran used to be a window washer.Movie Review: Surprisingly powerful
Summary: 4 Stars
We have become accustomed to slick, technically amazing cartoons produced by Disney and Pixar. Here is something completely different -- an animated movie produced by humans drawing with pencils on paper in black and white where the emphasis is on the story. We experience the Iranian Islamic Revolution and its brutal aftermath through the eyes of one young Iranian girl and her family.
This is recent history that needs to be retold and remembered because Iran looms so large on the world stage today. With its president spewing hatred on Israel and its scientists racing to acquire a nuclear weapon, we should remember how these extremists came to power and what they did to their own people once they had grasped it.
The movie is scrupulously fair, depicting the brutality of the Shah followed by the much greater savagery of the Islamic regime which succeeded it. We see women harassed for "improper" dress, parties busted, families searched for illegal alcohol. We see the hardship and suffering Iranians had to endure during the 8-year war with Iraq. Most of all, we see the effect of such intolerance and extremism on the delicate psyche of one bright, intelligent woman who wants nothing other than to grow up to be free and to realize her potential.
There are many charming and funny incidents in this movie -- it's not a complete downer. The serious story it tells is one we can all identify with.
Movie Review: Evolution of new documentary form
Summary: 4 Stars
A real feisty film, more universal(and all the better) for being drawn. It would have lost universality if real people had been used.It's clear that in totalitarian regimes it's always the feminine comic spirit that is most subversive with its use of laughter and ridicule. The truth will out whatever ideology represses it. The drawings are based upon Satrapi's graphic novel where the personal is political.Autobiographical but not narcissistic which is it's real interest,with not a computer drawing in sight,but with the warmth and imperfection of the hand-drawn which will long outlast any computer graphic.
Real comic exuberance even with its treatment of an out-of-touch God who Marji berates. I liked that scene where she tells her Gran she is divorcing and the Gran defuses the emotion saying "I thought somebody had died". She goes to Vienna and Paris, witnessing nihilism,racism and the emptiness of 'love', returning home a more complex adult.The content-war and Islamic revolution-the biggest thing to happen since the fall of the Berlin wall (or even before it ) towards the end of the twentieth century-is what makes the story translated into such a graphic medium so amazing.Cartoon as the new documentary form as in Waltz with Bashir.In the spirit of Haroun and the sea
of stories,Salman Rushdie's novel.
Movie Review: Retains the flavor of the original
Summary: 4 Stars
There has never been anything like "Persepolis" -- Marjane Satrapi's graphic adaptation of life during the Iranian revolution. The book's stark black and white images perfectly suited the horror of life under the Shah and the Ayatollahs. Could a movie adaptation ever do justice to the Satrapi's harrowing account? Thankfully, it pretty much did.
The movie more or less follows the narrative of Satrapi's work, following her from an idealistic (and a bit sadistic!) young girl through her struggles with the repressive forces of the revolution, to her wastrel exile in Vienna, and to her return to her home country. The character list from the book is a drastically simplified, focusing mostly on Satrapi's beloved grandmother, an adored uncle who dies in prison and her protective and secularized parents. Satrapi's artistic style, one of the neat things about the book, was retained, but expanded enough to allow the film to breathe. This is a true adaptation -- not a slavish repetition of the book's style and themes. I only wish that it could have been be longer. Focusing on the entire story of Persepolis I and II might have been a mistake.
A fine adaptation that I hope compels its audience to pick up the marvelous original!