Persepolis (2007)

image courtesy of nytimes.com

I recently caught up with HBO’s 2020 miniseries The Plot Against America, based on the Philip Roth novel of the same name (which I have read). I also just began reading It Can’t Happen Here by Sinclair Lewis. Needless to say, I was already primed for a “tyranny can happen anywhere” movie. Enter Marjane Satrapi, her graphic novel (the source material for this film), and co-writer/director Vincent Paronnaud.

Persepolis follows “Marji” from childhood in revolutionary Iran to adulthood in exile, framed by her sitting at Orly Airport, unable to board a flight back to Tehran. As a girl, she watches her upper-middle-class family join the 1979 revolution against the Shah, only to see the new Islamic regime impose stricter rule than before - her beloved uncle Anoosh is executed, and the Iran–Iraq War strips away what freedoms remained. As a rebellious teenager buying black-market music and Western clothes, she’s sent abroad to Vienna for safety, where she drifts through host families, a doomed relationship, and a period of homelessness before a near-fatal illness sends her back to Iran. There, depression and a suicide attempt give way to a renewed sense of purpose: she goes to university, marries and later divorces Reza, and keeps colliding with the regime’s hypocrisy and danger, until a party raid and a friend’s death push her to leave Iran for good - closing where it began, in the taxi outside Orly, telling the driver she’s come from Iran.

The best movies based on non-superhero comic books and graphic novels feel like their source material. This is one of those films, a graphic novel come to life that feels ripped right from the pages. The animation - while black and white and simple - feels expressionistic, shifting between realism and a sort of surrealism that demonstrates a more internal logic to the straightforward story. We see characters and events the way Marji remembers them (or wants to). This isn’t the world’s story of revolution and rebellion in Iran; it’s specifically Marji’s. It’s messy, it’s complicated, and sometimes it’s even apathetic. There are few who have stories similar to hers, and even theirs won’t be exactly parallel.

What struck me most is how the film resists turning Marji into either a martyr or a mouthpiece. So many movies about oppressive regimes flatten their protagonists into pure symbols of resistance, but Marji smokes, lies, makes terrible romantic choices, betrays a neighbor out of fear, and spirals into a period where she barely recognizes herself. The film trusts that her humanity, contradictions included, makes the politics land harder than righteousness ever could.

This film contends with big questions surrounding faith, family, and truth. And while dozens of coming-of-age films feel artificial, despite the animation, this one feels lived-in and natural. Marji is a real woman who was jerked around from place to place, ideology to ideology. But, at her heart, she always remains an Iranian proud of her family and her heritage. Life is complicated; she doesn’t let anyone - including herself - off the hook.

But, Yuki the dog is the MVP of this film.

3.5 out of 5 Stars