Film Study
We are going to watch the animated feature film “Persopolis”
The film tells us some interesting things about Iranian history, culture and
people. It also introduces us to some of next term’s concepts: socialisation,
identity, rites of passage, coming of age, and life stages.
Socialisation: the ways in which persons learn to become
members of a society. (Not to be confused with the term
“socialising – which means mixing socially with others.)
Identity: understanding of who you are and why you are that
person. Can involve a sense of social, cultural or ethnic
identity.
Rites of passage: events recognised at either a personal or
social level that imply an accepted change of status. For
example, the move from pre-school to primary school, a
citizenship ceremony for a migrant, a “first kiss” etc.
Coming of age: this relates to the adolescent stage. It’s when adolescents take on some adult
responsibilities. It is the theme of countless drama and comedy movies and novels.
Life-stages: stages of life that you move through: infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood,
late adulthood.
Consider and takes notes on the
above concepts while watching
the film. Note down specific
examples and quotes (the film is
subtitled) relating to these
concepts as well as the 9
fundamental concepts: persons,
society, culture, environment,
time, gender, power, authority,
technology)
Review: Peter malone, Signis
http://www.signis.net/article.php3?id_article=2353
Persepolis is animation with a difference. As with a number of French animated
films, this one is for adults rather than children. It is based on a series of comics
or graphic novels by Marjane Satrapi and they translate vividly to the screen,
most of them in strong, even heavy, black and white with some excursions into
colour.
Marjane Satrapi was born in Iran and her early years were spent in the era of the
Shah. In those days, living was rather easy and comfortable in Tehran, although
several of her relatives were imprisoned for their left-wing views. Then came the
Islamic Revolution and the tightening of controls and strictness is behaviour,
dress codes, education, especially for women. Her parents send Marjane to
Europe and she spends some time, working, poor, on the street, caught up with
the rebel culture and falling in love but betrayed. She returns to Iran and lives
1
through the restrictions of more recent years with her parents and her wise
grandmother. But Marjane needs more space and freedom and she leaves.
Catherine Deneuve and Chiara Mastroianni (Catherine Deneuve’s daughter) voice
mother and daughter in both the French version and the American-dubbed
version. (Sean Penn and Gena Rowlands also feature in the American version.)
The film won many awards including the Jury award in Cannes 2007 eliciting
protests from the Iranian authorities.
Highbeam Research Abstract for
“Why I wrote Persopolis, a graphical
novel memoir”, Satrapi, Marjane
published in Writing! November 1,
2003
Marjane Satrapi was born in Rasht, Iran, in 1969-which means she was ten when the revolution of
1979 transformed Iran into an Islamic republic.
She lived for years in Tehran, Iran's capital city,
under the repressive regime of the late Ayatollah
Ruhollah Khomeini and other Islamic extremist
leaders. A free spirit, Marjane chafed under the
restrictions that were placed on young people,
especially girls, including the edict that all
women must wear veils and chadors (long shawls
or cloaks) and that girls' education be limited.
She also rebelled against the censorship that
barred young Iranians from music, entertainment,
and other aspects of American and Western
culture.
Earlier this year, Marjane, now living in the
United States, published Persepolis, a memoir in
the form of a graphic novel. Persepolis (the name
of the capital of the ancient Persian empire) has
been widely praised by readers and other authors,
including Sandra Cisneros and Phillip Pullman.
Writer and editor Gloria Steinem captured the
unique quality of Persepolis: "the intimacy of a
memoir, the irresistibility of a comic book, and
the political depth of the conflict between
fundamentalism and democracy." In this brief
essay, Marjane Satrapi writes about how using
the graphic novel helped her tell her story with
great impact.
From the time I came to France in 1994, I was
always telling stories about life in Iran to my
friends. We'd see pieces about Iran on television,
but they didn't represent my experience at all.
Marjane Satrapi at Cannes: An
Iranian graphic novelist's coming of
age
By Joan Dupont, Tuesday, May 22, 2007 NEW
YORK TIMES,
The film "Persepolis," screening at the
Cannes festival in competition, was
adapted by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent
Paronnaud from Satrapi's black and white
graphic novels. The movie, in French, is
something new in an art form that is
spinning in all directions.
"I never saw it as a cartoon," the artist said
in an interview. The artwork had to be in
black and white, and the characters are
never cute. There are none of the usual
special effects - cars don't talk, Spidermen
don't fly. But it is funny, imaginative, and
sad, bringing the famous books to life.
At Cannes, the animated film in black and
white may not be viewed with pleasure by
all. There has been word that the Iranian
authorities are not pleased.
2
The visual diaries depict an Iranian girl's
life, growing up under several regimes and
revolutions, the rise of the mullahs, the
imposition of the veil. It is a dark past, a
hard story.
But it is also a movie of surprises: there's
the striking art work, but also the tempo,
fantasy, and drama, and the young author's
forceful point of view. The best thing is
the sense of real lives - her parents, uncle,
grandmother, friends and enemies throbbing behind the images and voices.
Chiara Mastroianni is the voice of the
independent Marjane, Catherine Deneuve
that of her worried mother, and Danielle
Darrieux that of her irrepressible
grandmother.
"I just hope that I can find such good
dubbing voices for the American version,"
Satrapi said.
Meeting the author/artist at the bar of a
Cannes hotel - our minutes are counted - is
like meeting a friend. For she looks
familiar, and we know so much about her
through the books. The black hair, the
mole by her nose are there - the cigarettes
are on the table.
She appears inhabited by a cast of
characters. She speaks fast, ideas tumble
out from a deep central intelligence. Her
English is perhaps less fluent than her
French, but it is pungent. In 15 minutes,
you get her beliefs and contradictions, a
sense of how she lives with herself and
adapts on her journeys from Iran, to
France, to America.
"Even though I've published more books
in the U.S., I felt that I could control the
project better in France," she says. "I had
this doubt about Hollywood; that they
might do my project like another 'Not
Without My Daughter,' a movie which
would make Iranians look like crazy
people, nicer maybe, not quite so Evil
Empire, but a little."
Yet, although she lives in Paris with her
Swedish husband, she is not completely
comfortable with the French. "I have this
strange relationship with the French
public: they always think they know stuff,
and they do. But they don't always know
the right things."
There is, in fact, one of those mysterious
cultural discrepancies: in France, she has a
cult following; in the United States, she
has caught on.
And now that she knows American
producers and distributors, through the
success of her books, she has more trust.
She is enthused by Michael Barker of
Sony Classics, the studio that will be
releasing "Persepolis" in the United States:
"Can you imagine, a business man who
teaches cinema at NYU!" she said,
referring to New York University.
She was also smitten with Kathleen
Kennedy, who coproduced the movie.
"Kathleen Kennedy liked the story so
much. We met in L.A. and she's such a
busy lady, I said 'I really don't know how
to thank you.' She told me, 'Make a good
movie; that's the best thanks.' "
Since Satrapi's American success - she
went over for the first time in 1999, and
again in 2001 - she feels more
comfortable.
"In the '70s, we grew up with American
culture - bowling with my cousins, the
music, hamburgers, pizza like in Chicago.
Nobody can believe how many parallels
between where I come from and America countries that are not very friendly these
days. But now that I know the country and
have done so many book tours, I think,
how stupid we are to make these clichés
about America."
Her eagle eye - the same one she depicts in
her books - lights up, an eye she trains on
others, and on herself. "We are all so
stupid, prejudiced and unjust to each
other."
Satrapi has lived dramatic times,
successive regimes, censorship and fear at least, her parents' fears for her. "And I
was lucky to have the grandmother I had:
she was very straightforward, and she
3
loved justice so much that she could be
completely unjust. She never lied.
"I love old people. I heard incredible
stories, and the things that other people
don't like in old people, I love. They told
me lots of stories, I couldn't get enough.
And I loved being the only child, never
wanted a brother or sister."
Marjane, the rebel, the independent spirit,
is in the movie, confiding in her
grandmother, visiting her favorite uncle in
jail, on the eve of his death, egging her
friends on to punish evildoers.
She says that she always drew and told
stories. "And I was good at school, at
math. My father was an engineer and they
thought that I would become an engineer.
But I didn't become an engineer. I was told
that my stories were lies. I never
understood that: a lie is to benefit from
something, but if you tell a beautiful story,
it's just beautiful."
When she was 10, the veil was imposed on
young girls. "I had to wear it at school. For
years, I had been playing soccer with the
boys from school, and one day I saw they
took another goalie.
"They said, 'We won't play soccer with
you any more because you're a girl.' For
five years they hadn't noticed, and then
they realized their goalie was a girl! So I
went and did karate." She shrugged.
Her parents, she said, didn't bring her up
as a girl - "that femininity thing: I have
always been treated like a human being.
They never said, you have to act like a
girl. And, very early, I understood that I
didn't have to justify myself. You always
have choices, and you can't lie to yourself.
I'm not looking for perfection," she added.
She talked about how, in ancient Greece,
the gods were not perfect. "They were
making love and drinking and burping,"
she said, laughing.
"And people adored these imperfect gods:
if the gods could be imperfect, then they
could be imperfect. The search for
perfection will always make us feel guilty,
and our cultures, both East and West,
share that guilt."
Satrapi identifies herself as somebody who
sits between East and West.
"I situate myself, between the two: I was
Iranian and I wanted so much to become a
Westerner it make life hard for me." This
is the struggle that we see in the movie:
Marjane in Vienna, trying to play it cool,
starving for a crumb of recognition, and
then, starving on the streets, a little matchgirl in the snow, rejected by the nuns, and
her peers.
"I saw that you can be two things, and
three and four different things. It's not so
comfortable when you are sitting between
two or three chairs, but you do have three
chairs instead of one."
Since the books were published, she has
not gone back to Iran.
"The problem is that Iran is not a state of
law, so you don't know what will happen.
My family come and go. They have never
punished the families - not since a brief
period after the revolution."
She lives in the Marais district, and loves
going to the movies in Paris - "you can see
everything." She said that the German
Expressionists have influenced her work Fritz Lang, Murnau. And you can detect
the shadow of Murnau over her characters
in the haunting black and white imagery.
"I also love Tarantino's 'Jackie Brown' and
Abbas Kiarostami," she said.
Told that she was brave to have turned her
intimate life into images, she responded,
"My point of view is subjective, I don't
pretend it's not. It's best to talk in my own
name. If you try to talk in terms of a
people, nationality, a culture, it doesn't
mean anything. But when you talk about
one person, this person can be anybody. I
don't know another way of working. I try
to be free, I try to do my best."
4