A Fine Work of Art: “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi

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Persepolis is an animation film by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. The film is an adaptation of Satrapi’s four volumes of popular autobiographical and striking book that bears the same name. The book narrates the conditions in contemporary Iran through the life of a young girl named Marjane who has splendid aspirations; in being the last prophet of the galaxy and in shaving her legs. The girl has a turbulent life and is only nine years of age when Iran is engulfed in waves of revolution that make her parents take part in demonstrations and she finds her childhood shrouded in political developments. Events lead to freedom being granted to prisoners from the dungeons of the Shah’s regime and ultimately to the ouster of the monarchy.

The film commences at an airport where Marjane is unable to catch a flight to Iran. While smoking a cigarette she is seen remembering her childhood days in 1979 when she was a nine-year-old girl with big dreams and ambitions. The director has been careful in depicting the film in black and white while she remembers her childhood. The present-day depictions are made in color while the historic narratives bear similarity to shadow theatres. When the uprising is taking place against the US-backed monarchy in Iran, Marjane wonders whether her family has the justification to support her uncle Anoosh who was a communist. Her childhood is full of instances where her family members work against the ruling system. The film is very particular in pointing out that the fundamental inconsistencies of society result in many well-positioned intellectuals being pushed into revolting against the prevailing systems. Such circumstances make these people realize the contradictions in society and these understandings make them seek changes in building a new set of conditions within their environment. Such intellectuals are usually thrust by popular waves into heading the movement for transition. There are several instances in Iran whereby such intellectuals have lost their lives while being on this path (Dave Calhoun, 2009).

The hopes of Marjane’s family are shattered when the elections are won by Islamic Fundamentalists that transform the country into a repressive state and force the women to dress modestly. Marjane’s uncle is arrested and executed for his political beliefs, and in being highly disheartened she forgets her aspirations and makes attempts to fit into the imposed realities of the fanatical regime. There are several instances of injustices that make the family disillusioned, such as the refusal of the hospital authorities to allow a terminally ill patient to be sent abroad for treatment, which later leads to his death. Under such conditions, the family tries to find relief in secret parties to get some pleasures such as alcohol that the government had banned.

As Marjane grows older she refuses to reconcile to the imposed restrictions and starts indulging in western habits such as clandestinely buying heavy metal music and western outfits in the black market. After she openly criticized the government’s policies in front of her teachers her parents sent her to study in a school in Vienna lest she is arrested for her outspoken behavior. In Austria, Marjane feels extremely isolated and surrounded by superficial people who annoyed her a great deal because of their constant charades in making her feel shameful about being an Iranian. Her habits deteriorated in Vienna and she started smoking hashish. Her so-called Iranian shame culminated in a fiery love affair with a smart local which also ended when she found him to be cheating her. She began to suffer from deep depression and eventually developed acute bronchitis.

Marjane eventually is permitted by her parents to return to Iran and aims at beginning a new life since the war with Iraq was now over and things looked brighter now in Iran. But that was not to be as she finds that the people in her country are now more traumatized than before due to atrocities such as mass executions for having undesired political principles and trivial religious absurdities that made life intolerable especially for women. To cope with such conditions, Marjane uses peculiar tactics such as falsely implicating a man of teasing her so that she does not get arrested for wearing cosmetics.

She even marries her boyfriend much against the wishes of her grandmother who did not want her to come under the scrutiny of the religious police. Her marriage eventually falls apart and matters become critical when a party that she is attending is raided by the police and a person is killed while trying to escape. Marjane speaks out against public morality and double standards at a school forum which makes her family decide that she should leave the country again to avoid getting arrested as a political dissident. Marjane consents to do so but she has to pay a price for this because her grandmother dies after she leaves. In coming back to the present days, Marjane is not able to return to Iran and she reconciles to her fate in being comfortable despite the self-imposed exile.

The bitter truth in the film is recounted by simple dialogues and pictures while scorning at the tormenters and their cronies. Such narrations keep the viewer engaged in the historical events while the learning continues concerning the conditions in Iran. Marjane is not depicted as an average Iranian girl. Her family is full of intellectuals and is of adequate means. Nevertheless, Persepolis portrays a realistic history of Iran through an account of the uncommon life experienced by the common man. The narrated history is part of the heritage of Marjane’s family and shapes the girl’s life as a part of the heritage that has been depicted in the film (Kori Davis, 2009).

The historical background of the film enables a better understanding of Margene’s life and the events that shaped her life. Such events did shape to some extent the world that we live in today. The 1979 revolution in Iran and the subsequent developments including the ouster of the monarchy resulted in increased powers for the Islamic Republic. The narration by Satrapi, through the voices of the characters, reveals the examples of extreme suppression of the Iranian people, such as women being compelled to use hijab, a large number of arrests and executions, and people escaping from the country in large numbers.

The movie has posed pertinent questions about the revolution that may not have been answered fully but has triggered a thinking process and analysis into the inherent nature of developments that took place. In a particular scene, a relative of Marjane is severely ill and requires heart surgery to be done, the facility for which is not available in Iran. To be operated on and treated for the severe medical problem he required permission to go abroad, and his wife went to the administration chief of the hospital to allow her husband to proceed abroad for medical treatment. But the hospital chief, who was the caretaker in her building before the revolution, had now become a staunch Muslim, grown a beard and did not drop sight on women, refuses to permit going abroad in simply saying that the fate of the patient is up to the mercy of God. The scene conjures the feeling of how much impotent people can become as a result of changed circumstances and newfound power. It also reveals the irony regarding, superstition against the sciences and ignorance about logic and the interest of people (Chris Tilly, 2008).

The film is clear in depicting the ideological and political questions that arise with every revolution. Old relations are disturbed and new ways open up in creating fresh relationships. However the situation becomes different when the leaders come under the grip of forces that insist on preserving the old orders, albeit in a new form, which is exactly what happened in Iran after the revolution. The prevalent backward tendencies amongst the people were exploited and reinforced in making them a tool that was made available to the new government. One such tendency was to use the opportunities enabled by the situations in grabbing the positions that were not previously possible to reach (Melora Koepke, 2009).

There were instances in the film whereby people belonging to the lower strata got a chance to vent their anger and to take revenge against people who previously held powerful positions. Such instances of violence targeted people who were not in the ruling class but belonged to the educated middle class. Under such circumstances, it becomes clear that unless there is a significant change in the prevailing relationships, only a few, who are opportunists, can take advantage of the situation while the greater majority continues to be suppressed and exploited. It was the Islamic Republic that used all the possible ideological resources, more significantly religion, to bewilder the people and to set up its government by taking advantage of the diffident tendencies in keeping an accepted face and maintaining its position amongst the masses. This resulted in the brutal repression of the intellectuals and the majority of the people (LISA NESSELSON, 2007).

The film has thoroughly exposed the crimes perpetrated by the Islamic Republic and has also examined the role of the West in placing puppet dictators in power who were equally engaged in the suppression of people. Viewers of Persepolis can infer the role of Britain in having brought to power the father of the Shah, as also how Iran was pillaged of its oil reserves and how Savak representatives were trained to torture by the CIA. The film exposes the systematic sale of arms to both Iraq and Iran by the Western countries. All such instances are grim reminders of the fact that Iran did not exist in a vacuum but had become an integral part of an international system that is spread throughout the world. In essence, the struggle in Iran is a part of the struggle against such a global system (Sarah Sachs-Eldridge, 2009).

Persepolis is an important work of art. The film’s modest form appears to have been the best way of telling a story that is full of major issues and events. Words have been used succinctly and the drawings and color are simple of the economy in telling a compact story in a short time. In one context the simplicity and at times the crudity of the straightforwardness prove to be the strengths of the film. Satrapi has commented that the film was made with conventional hand-drawn individual animated picture drawings instead of graphics on the computer because computer-generated graphics are faultless. This enables the understanding that humans are not perfect too which is reflected by the hand-drawn lines in the animations in the true spirit of reflecting their souls. Surely, in using such techniques anyone familiar with animation techniques can imagine the amount of effort that must have gone into making the film.

So far animated films were thought to be the realm of children in being their medium of entertainment and learning. Persepolis is a rare animated film along with others such as Maus or Waltz with Bashir, that have assumed adult themes in putting forth social and international issues before viewers. They are the cinematic equivalent of being a playground or a place for hanging around for adults. These films have proved how animation has become a resourceful tool for storytelling in presenting the story unabashedly in its unique style and reduced realities in visual terms. Animation films can assume an angle that reality films can never achieve. Waltz with Basher is also a story about humanity whereby an ex-soldier from Israel is haunted by nightmares of barking dogs in investigating his role in the massacres in the Lebanon War of 1982. Maus is the story of the struggles of a Holocaust survivor and his experiences. Animation films have now started gaining immense popularity in conveying issues relating to human emotions and suffering in a more subtle way.

The directors of Persepolis have turned it into a fine work of art by using the contradictions present in the life of a young girl, and by taking the example of a country that is taken aback by revolution and stuck in a war. They have portrayed a world that is full of love but confined within walls and have converged people from both oppressed and oppressive countries much close. Satrapi remarked in this regard that people have to be looked upon as humans otherwise nothing will happen when they are bombarded and killed. He says that several people keep getting killed in Iraq daily, yet no homage is paid to them, at least by observing a minute’s silence. In effect, this black and white animation film depicts the people of Iran in a more realistic way than the several discourses and articles that tend to portray them as fanatics. Viewers can infer that despite the strict code of conduct in the country, people continue to celebrate life in different ways, even if it entails getting into problems for having worn lipstick or losing their lives for attending parties. Indeed, as Satrapi believes, the film is a success if people who come to watch the film say that the characters are human beings like them.

References

Chris Tilly, Persepolis UK Review, 2008, Web.

Dave Calhoun, Movie review, Persepolis, Web.

Kori Davis, A Review of Marjane Satrapi’s eccentric Biopic, Persepolis, Web.

LISA NESSELSON, Persepolis, May, 2007, Variety Melora Koepke, Non-stop Persepolis, Web.

Sarah Sachs-Eldridge, Film review: Persepolis, Web.

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A Fine Work of Art: “Persepolis” by Marjane Satrapi

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