Persepolis
Watching “Persepolis”- the striking French animated film that is the first French film since “The Triplets of Belleville” to sneak into the usually all-American category of Best Animaated Feature Oscar- I wondered how the rest of the world considers American animation and its’ largely family-oriented use of the art form (though the occasional renegade, like Richard Linklater in “Waking Life” and “A Scanner Darkly” and Zemeckis with “Beowulf,” will occasionally try to breakthrough to the mainstream). The box-office receipts for even the lesser animated films from Disney and Dreamworks show that they’re popular, but you can’t help but look at something like “Persepolis” (or even “Belleville”) and think that America’s so ghettoized the art form as family entertainment that we’re squandering its’ deeper possibilities (Miyazaki and other Anime directors do the same thing). Of course, the best animated films, like live-action, always tell deeper stories, but how often do you see purely dramatic animated features from American filmmakers? It’s not often, and it usually comes with name recognition.
That’s what makes something like “Persepolis” so important to world cinema. Based on the graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi, who directs with Vincent Paronnaud, it’s a fascinating and imaginatively told story- based on Satrapi’s life- as Marjane (voiced as a child by the fantastic Chiara Mastroianni) finds it difficult growing up in Iran at the time when her parents- helping the Revolution- force her to try and conform and her grandmother wants her to be herself, even if that means going against the culturally-ordained disdain of all things Western and the beginning of women wearing veils. The outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war in the ’80s leads to further turbulence, with Marjane’s parents desiring to send her off to Vienna to free her from the constrains of the new cultural order. But Europe further alienates the free-spirited, but identity-challenged, Marjane; she finds a piece of herself back home, but the ongoing cultural thaw makes life difficult for the young woman.
Watching a lot of Pixar films- features and shorts- recently, it occurred to me a recurring theme of outsiders or protagonists that go against the grain of the socially acceptable who nonetheless find acceptance by staying true to themselves. “Persepolis” is nowhere near as optimistic, but Marjane follows the same pattern of a protagonist going against the grain of society; that her story has a basis in reality makes it all the more compelling. The imaginatively simple animation seals the deal- largely in the black and white of Satrapi’s graphic novels (scenes of color stand in striking contrast), what it lacks in artistic complexity it makes up for in visual depth and evocation. Though there are many moments of exaggeration, there’s something oddly life-like about the images at moments even when the drawings are very much stylized. Few animated films have felt more alive on screen- fewer still 2-D films are so 3 dimensional in their effect. And still fewer of any style have told a story so fascinating, so moving, so palpably real. My vote will still go for Brad Bird’s “Ratatouille” as the year’s best, but it’ll be impossible to shake the unforgettable and unmissable story told in “Persepolis”; it takes you places American animation is largely afraid to go…unless you’re willing to search for it.
