FEATURE

persepolis
a revolution, a rebellious teen and a return

For this year’s Academy Awards ceremony, France’s official entry was a surprise. Instead of a film starring a cool and seductive young actress smoking a cigarette, or a brooding hero with a Roman profile smoking a cigarette, France chose a film starring a grumpy teenager with a big mole on her nose, dressed in a black hijab (and smoking a cigarette).

The film was ‘Persepolis’, an animated feature based on Marjane Satrapi’s graphic novels of the same name, which she co-created and co-directed with Vincent Paronnaud, a French graphic novelist with whom she shares an art studio in Paris. Both the film and the novels are an account of Satrapi’s childhood and coming-of-age in pre-revolutionary Iran and the ensuing turbulent and tragic social upheaval of the eight-year war with Iraq and Ayatollah Khomeini’s regime. The fact that the subject matter is drawn is what makes it so accessible, watchable and memorable. After all, if it were a documentary or live action film on the same subject, would we rush to see it for an evening’s entertainment?

“With live action, it would have turned into a story of people living in a distant land who don’t look like us,” says Satrapi. “At best it would have been an exotic story, and at worst, a ‘Third World’ story.” Instead, “Because the drawings are abstract… this helped everybody relate to it, whether in China, Chile or Korea. It is a universal story.” Certainly, the film fills one with tears of nostalgia, even though the experiences are not our own. Somehow, we too recognise the kind, sad uncle that patted us on the head; the bustling, bosomy grandma who put jasmine blossoms in her bra to smell nice when people hugged her; the exhausted, frustrated and ever-loving parents and the long-lost childhood friends. Essentially, ‘Persepolis’ is not a film about politics, but a personal story...