PERSEPOLIS — CANNES 2007

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Culture Shock
Marjane Satrapi Revolutionizes Animated Cinema
By Cole Smithey

Executed in a striking style of bold black and white animation with restrained splashes of color, "Persepolis" is Marjane Satrapi’s highly-original autobiographical coming-of-age story that takes place during and after Iran’s 1978 Islamic Revolution that resulted in a war with Iraq.

In Tehran, free-spoken nine-year-old Marjane (voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) dreams of saving the world, but her irreverent sense of liberty is at direct odds with Iran’s fundamentalist constraints that plague her daily life. This is a girl that not only questions authority but also talks back to it with educated passion.

Marjane entertains fantasies of chatting with God and Karl Marx and it’s during these witty nocturnal conversations that we comprehend the young girl’s precocious intellect and earnest desire to connect with the world on a personal level. For a moment she’s like a character from a Peanuts cartoon, and the connection to Charles Schultz’s iconic personalities is helped along by American pop culture references like Abba or the theme from "Rocky."

When she makes a black market purchase of an Iron Maiden cassette, you can’t help but empathize with the defiant act as it mocks Marjane’s poor taste in rebel rock that could more appropriately have discovered the Clash instead.

At 14, Marjane’s worried parents send her to Vienna to escape the Ayatollah Khomeini‘s revolutionary regime responsible for murdering her politically active uncle, and to attend high school in a more peaceful environment. But sex, drugs, romance, and anti-Iranian prejudice bring Marjane’s four years abroad to an inauspicious end living homeless on the streets.

Nevertheless, it’s this significant growth period that gives Marjane a touchstone of free-willed experience when she returns to Iran to go to college. Once back home, Marjane marries and attempts to live under Iran’s inhospitable conditions before the young humanist is forced to consider permanent exile away from her home country.

"Persepolis" has a vibrant punk rock take-no-prisoners tone that is as refreshing as it is elucidating. The animated autobiography aspect has a liberating effect of allowing the viewer to make more random associations with the characters by virtue of its uncluttered visual space. The title comes from an ancient Persian city in southwest Iran, and suggests a connection to a futuristic past.

Marjane’s grandmother (voiced by Danielle Darrieux) tells the troubled youth, "There’s nothing worse in the world than bitterness and revenge. Always keep your integrity and stay true to yourself."

Against the gloriously stylized backdrop of the movie, those words resonate with an inspiration that is undeniable. Marjane Satrapi’s and Vincent Paronnaud’s animated film adaptation of Satrapi’s four-volume graphic novel shared the 2007 Cannes Film Festival Jury Prize with Carlos Reygadas’ "Secret Light."

Marjane Satrapi, an illustrator and author of children’s books now living in Paris, was born into a progressive (read liberal) Iranian family in 1969. Her grandmother told her that the saddest life is to be born a cow and die a donkey — meaning that dying dumber than you were at birth, because fear got the best of you in life, is a disgrace.

It’s this kind of pithy logic that pulses through the simplistically stylized yet complex story of her rebellious journey. And it’s also this type of cross-generational dialogue that has gone missing between the idealism of the ’60s and the fallout of Watergate that backhandedly led America to its current condition.

Exile is the theme that Satrapi tugs at in every imaginable direction with an informed innocence striking for its clarity. For any American that has ever sworn to leave the country if the Republicans steal yet another election, Satrapi’s story is a lesson in objectivity.

In interview, Satrapi has pointed out that while the Bush administration seems obsessed with attacking Iran on a basis of lacking human rights, the U.S. government is only too happy to sell out to China, which has a notoriously low regard for human welfare. As she puts it, "The real war is not between the West and the East, but rather between intelligent and stupid people."

It’s telling that the Iranian government has called for a boycott on "Persepolis" when the filmmakers are busy testing a groundbreaking distribution model that promises to open up new distribution channels for other animated films.

The original French language version will open in the states on Christmas day, before giving way to an English-voiced version to be released soon thereafter. For the English version, Sean Penn will voice Marjane’s father, Iggy Pop will play her politically invested uncle, and Gena Rowlands will portray Marjane’s influential grandmother.

At the end of the day, "Persepolis" is an immensely meaningful film because of the cultural gaps that it bridges toward a new kind of adult cinematic dialogue. Here is that rare profoundly original film that will open floodgates. It also announces the brazen identity of a fiercely independent female voice in international cinema. Marjane Satrapi is a real-life heroine.