Persepolis, Picture House
Cert 12A, 96 mins
By Matt Jackson
Highly defined brush strokes and a very emotional incidental soundtrack mark out this films stylistic approach to animation reproducing a story filled with so many different moods.
Persepolis tells the story of Marjane, who from an early age was taught to stand up for her own rights as a woman as well as distinguish the truth about the regime that came to power in her home country of Iran from her family and friends.
Each main character is nicely fleshed out and there is a solid thread of good humor running through even the darkest moments of the film. Marjane herself is a cheeky young girl growing in to a young woman in the midst of serious socio-political upheaval. Freedoms are swept away in the name of extremist religious oppression and those close to her are put in mortal danger.
Marjane’s uncle (voiced by Iggy Pop) is a strong influence in her early life and provides her with a strong ideological role model. He educates her about the cause and effects of the revolution and subsequent war with Iraq in the form of a heavily stylised flashback in which most of the film is portrayed in black and white.
Marjane’s parents and grandma provide a good supporting cast as well as the friends she met in Vienna and back home in Iran.
The way each scene segues together with the next is done in such a way that it draws your eye to the next frame like a graphic novel and it’s certainly never obvious where the story is going.
It’s amazing how much impact a film with such simple drawing has made. From love affairs to war and destitution, punk concerts and serious comedy this film is constantly engaging from start to finish and pulls off the rarest of tricks – it’s a film which you want to go on for much longer. It is definitely worth tracking down the graphic novel upon which Persepolis is based.