Reviewed by Michael Edwards
Stars the voices of (English version) Chiara Mastroianni, Sean Penn, Catherine Deneuve, Gena Rowlands, Iggy Pop, Amethyste Frezignac; (Original French) Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian, Gabrielle Lopes, Francois Jerosme
Certification UK 15 | US R
Runtime 112 minutes
Written & directed by Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud
I can't be any more clear than this — Persepolis is one of those exceptional and rare pieces of cinema that manages to engage and affect the audience on every level. A deeply moving and astoundingly intelligent film Persepolis manages to achieve what so many other films have failed at, particularly recently: the expression of a universal humanity underlying the experience of conflict.
What makes this film unique is that, perhaps because it is largely writer/director Satrapi's own story, it is at once an intensely personal tale of an Iranian living through the trials of the Islamic revolution and the Iraq-Iran war and a commentary on how these political events are often a freakish accident within a national history. These are the sort of themes that are frequently spoon-fed to audiences and subsequently regurgitated in disgust at the blandness of the meal; but because this film takes a different route, and instead invites you to share the direct experience of these things in one woman's life, I found myself gobbling the material down greedily. Satrapi's tale and the wonderful characters that populate it are a bunch that are as delightful for their well-rounded realism as for their quirky idiosyncrasies (her grandmother dips her breasts in a bowl of icy water for 10 minutes a day to keep them pert, for example) which all continue to shine through as the characters are buffeted by the optimism of the revolution, which soon turns to despair, by the constant fear that pervaded through the eight-year Iraq-Iran war and through the painful separation of the family as members are imprisoned, killed or emigrate.
It isn't just content that stands out, either; the animation is superb. The medium itself is intrinsically suited to the story, being abstract and largely black-and-white there is a complete sense of identification with the characters and their circumstances whether they're in Tehran under bombardment or an underground gig in Vienna — something difficult if not impossible to achieve to a live action feature. But more than that, Persepolis engulfs you with what Ms Satrapi has called a "stylised realism", a strange concept stemming from her love of Italian neorealism and German expressionism which I wouldn't have imagined being combined, but I'm very glad she did. We are thrown from moments of simple sincerity to abstract swirling embodiments of emotional turmoil which work together perfectly to draw us into the story.
In a film that isn't about conveying a message about the turbulence of warfare, it is a beautifully rendered story of a number of amazingly intricately created characters who seemingly effortlessly convey the magnitude of their context and of their own inner strength. With propagandistic bilge like Lions for Lambs and Stop-Loss rattling around, Persepolis is a welcome breath of fresh air that left me wondering how the buffoons at the Academy gave the animation Oscar to Ratatouille.