'Persepolis' book, movie - two versions of same story

By: Laura Katzer

Posted: 2/11/08

"The Complete Persepolis," a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi is an utterly human and personal story. Satrapi successfully mixes the emotions of childhood and the journey to adulthood with political and social turmoil.

It is Satrapi's memoir of her life in Iran before, during and after the revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.

Persepolis is named after the capital city of ancient Persia. Satrapi is concerned with remembering the past and this makes her story seem too nostalgic in parts.

At first, Persepolis seems deceptively simple.

In the graphic novel format, the spare yet charming childlike drawings illustrate the story easily. But the content is far from simple and the novel never offers easy answers for its characters or readers.

Persepolis is told in vignette-like sections, each section being a mini story in the larger tale. Throughout the book the focus remains on Satrapi's relationships and experiences. Her father, mother and grandmother are important secondary characters and the main support in Satrapi's life. Satrapi's grandmother is particularly influential and doles out humor and choice words of wisdom.

The story begins in Tehran in1980, when Satrapi was ten, with the introduction of the mandatory veil in her school.

With a child's point of view, Satrapi explains her and her peers' natural and often hilarious reactions to the social effects of the confusing regime change.

Satrapi believed, in the complete confidence of childhood, that she was destined to be the last prophet of Islam.

To her, God was a grandfatherly, wise being and she held daily conversations with him. Her parents, who were more political than religious, also educated her in politics and philosophy through books.

Her favorite was a comic book called "Dialectic Materialism" with a drawing of Karl Marx, who she describes as looking like God but with curlier hair. As violence on all sides of the revolution progressed and when her favorite uncle was executed, both her political heroes and God became empty.

For little Satrapi, God and political comics could not truly explain her or her country's turmoil. Her parents, who had supported the revolution, saw the hope of a socialist democracy clouded by radical fundamentalists.

Under increasing oppression and nationalist propaganda, a newly adolescent Satrapi rebels by telling off her teachers and trolling the black market for Iron Maiden tapes.

Satrapi later attends school in Vienna, struggles for acceptance, falls in and out of love and returns to Tehran as a young woman.

The adult Satrapi is just as humorous and rebellious as the young one.

It is really impressive how Satrapi blends so much humor and very real emotion into black and white line drawings and a slender amount of dialogue.

What could have been a didactic or bitter tale is full of hard but meaningful memories. But like the comic books Satrapi's parents gave her to teach her about dialectic materialism, Che Guevera and Karl Marx, Persepolis only tells one woman's tale in what amounts to a sea of other just as nuanced experiences.

Still this is one amazing memoir that is very worth reading.

The film version

The film Persepolis is a brilliant animated movie based on the graphic novel (of the same name) by Marjane Satrapi. It's also a great film adaptation of a graphic novel.

The film uses flat black and white hand drawn animation for the majority of the movie, the look accurately reflects the comic-strip style of the book.

The directors were right to preserve the comic-book feel. They make full use of the black and white contrast by imitating the style of film noir and expressionism.

The visuals are extremely powerful for their relative simplicity and the use of black is extremely effective.

Persepolis was made in France and is entirely in French with English subtitles.

The film starts with Marjane (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) who just arrived in Paris and is musing over her memories of life in Iran. Her mind wanders to when she was a child living in Tehran before the Shah was deposed.

Little Marjane (voiced by Gabrielle Lopes) is six years old and has two goals: to one day shave her legs and to be the last prophet of Islam.

Like many Iranians, Marjane's mother (the voice of Catherine Deneuve) and father (voiced by Simon Abkarian) are dissatisfied with the Shah's rule and participate in protests against it.

When the Shah finally gives up power, the factions that were united against him unravel and in violence the radical Islamists emerge as the most powerful.

Her hero, uncle Anouche (voiced by Francois Jerosme), is released from prison and then re-imprisoned and executed by the new regime. For Marjane, who has strong beliefs in the justice of God and leftist politics, this is heartbreaking.

The person who support's Marjane the most throughout her life is her fabulous grandmother (voiced by Danielle Darrieux) who takes all things in stride with wit and wisdom.

As Marjane grows into a teenager her parents send her to Vienna to study. She makes friends and falls in love but the inane attitudes of her peers and general lack of cultural context keep her emotionally isolated.

When she finally returns to Iran as a young woman the social changes are shocking to her.

The humor in the movie is palpable. It's particularly funny when in a figure drawing class, at the University in Tehran, her and her classmates are supposed to draw a completely veiled model.

Persepolis is wonderfully directed and adapted from the novel. It also shares the same weaknesses as the book of being a little too nostalgic and having episodic plot. In spite of minor weak points, the story of Persepolis shines and the visuals are amazing.

lkatzer@unews.com