Drawn to Life

A colorful story of childhood sketched in simple black and white.

by Shaun Brady

IRAN, SO FAR AWAY: A grown-up Marjane flashes back to her youth. (CLICK IMAGE FOR LARGER VERSION)

Recommended

Over the past few decades, the graphic novel has evolved into an unexpectedly ripe venue for memoirs encompassing personal history alongside major political upheaval. The template was set by Art Spiegelman's Maus, but Marjane Satrapi's pair of Persepolis books — relating her childhood in Iran and her later experiences in Vienna and France — have proven worthy successors.

The strength of the medium is in its malleability. A page or a panel can reveal epic scope or fine detail, objective reality or subjective interpretation. Those same traits are inherent in animated film, and in teaming with animator Vincent Paronnaud to bring her story to the screen, Satrapi takes advantage not only of the shared attributes, but seizes the opportunity to remold her tale with the unique advantages that moving pictures can offer.

Comic book adaptations typically go to one of two extremes: either neglecting the unique artistic perspective that made their source special in the first place, or stitching together reenacted panels like a mega-budget flip book. Persepolis falls into neither trap. The charming black-and-white artwork is intact, while myriad situations are imaginatively recast through movement and montage.

Combining both books, the film splits roughly into two time periods: Satrapi's childhood in Iran during the late '70s and early '80s, then skipping forward several years to examine her college years in Vienna and her return to Iran before finally emigrating to France for good.

Given the settings and situations, both halves are ripe for political and social commentary. The stark imagery of the early scenes powerfully captures the oppressive terror of living under a regime where a slip of the tongue can lead to imprisonment or death. The silhouetted shadow puppetry of the political scenarios are contrasted with the lively, vivid animation of the young Satrapi, the simple pleasures of childhood and family answering the oft-asked question of how it can be possible for sane human beings to live in such conditions — even as the corrupting influence of such a society is constantly evident.

In Vienna, of course, the issues change somewhat. Here, instead of being a member of a community grasping to understand the seismic shifts in their nation, she becomes the representative of a misunderstood and maligned people. Prejudice manifests itself in a variety of ways, and the people she encounters fail to remember that an individual shouldn't have to answer for an accident of personal geography.

But Persepolis is far from a political screed. Anyone looking for resentful fist-shaking at the current summit of the Axis of Evil will be wasting their time. Satrapi makes no secret of the wrongs she feels have been perpetrated in her native land (the author herself has expressed no desire to return). But rather than damning, her depiction is chock-full of the ambivalent emotions that anyone feels toward their home, where cherished memories cannot be neatly severed from harsh realities.

All of this is backdrop to Satrapi's personal story, which is what makes the events so compelling. In a way, the two halves are both tales of personal disillusionment on the road to maturity. The childhood sequences depict the way that the evils of their elders taint the joys of youth, as in the sequence where Satrapi and her friends set out to attack a boy whose father is rumored to be a member of the secret police responsible for the execution of her beloved uncle.

In moments such as this, and especially in the second half, Satrapi reveals a unique willingness to look with unbiased eyes on her own missteps and flaws. There is an echo of that scene when the post-Vienna Satrapi averts the attention of the authorities from her own transgression, wearing makeup, by accusing a man of ogling her inappropriately. Her gleeful recounting of the incident garners a harsh rebuke from her grandmother, all the more damning for the woman's unconditional adoration of her grandchild.

Persepolis is wholly composed of such events, where the global and the intimate intertwine and color one another. The film's strength is that in laying bare Satrapi's own history and experiences, her own moments of triumph and loss, her humbling mistakes and moments of pure selfishness, her story is both specific to its time and place and startlingly universal.

(s_brady@citypaper.net)

PERSEPOLIS

Written and directed by Vincent Paronnaud and Marjane Satrapi

A Sony Pictures Classics release