Post by imayne on Feb 5, 2008 11:09:52 GMT -5
Hang on to your hats, folks, this is one of the best films you will EVER see.
"Persepolis" is one of those things that reaffirms your belief in the human spirit. That's right, I said "things", not movies. It's a movie that creates believable souls, not characters, whose laughs and tears, triumphs and tragedies ultimately become your own, because its main character follows a quest that all of us can identify with: finding our place in the world.
Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran in the last days of the Shah. While a notorious autocrat with American backing, he presided over the remains of a fragile and proud Empire that was already a hollowed out shell underneath an exterior of openness and splendour.
It is a journey that is sweet, funny, harrowing and ultimately heartbreaking. Adapted from Satrapi's own graphic novel, which I consider one of the best books I have ever read in the past ten years. Satrapi as writer and director is a modern day Scheherazade, conjuring up and making us able to feel what a vanished world was like, so that the reign of the Shah and the beginning of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ensuing Iran-Iraq War, and Satrapi's own experiences in Europe as a teenager feel as alive and as adventurous as any voyage of Sinbad, and her instinct for storytelling matches the legendary Queen's. Under the retelling of her and co-director Vincent Paronnaud, black and white drawings do not just acquire personalities, they acquire souls and spirits.
This movie is a showcase of one of those things that only animation can do: boil a story down to its essence in the manner of a Moorish Alchemist. No amount of live action, however well done, will be able to render so starkly the brutality of the Shah's troops, so lovingly and so beautifully the minor irritances of first love, and the way that the tragedy of heartbreak segues into the childish petulances of resentment, and the freedom and bewilderment of a life adrift.
"Persepolis" is a wonderful, humane and bittersweet film, simply put, an experience to be treasured.
"Persepolis" is one of those things that reaffirms your belief in the human spirit. That's right, I said "things", not movies. It's a movie that creates believable souls, not characters, whose laughs and tears, triumphs and tragedies ultimately become your own, because its main character follows a quest that all of us can identify with: finding our place in the world.
Marjane Satrapi grew up in Iran in the last days of the Shah. While a notorious autocrat with American backing, he presided over the remains of a fragile and proud Empire that was already a hollowed out shell underneath an exterior of openness and splendour.
It is a journey that is sweet, funny, harrowing and ultimately heartbreaking. Adapted from Satrapi's own graphic novel, which I consider one of the best books I have ever read in the past ten years. Satrapi as writer and director is a modern day Scheherazade, conjuring up and making us able to feel what a vanished world was like, so that the reign of the Shah and the beginning of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the ensuing Iran-Iraq War, and Satrapi's own experiences in Europe as a teenager feel as alive and as adventurous as any voyage of Sinbad, and her instinct for storytelling matches the legendary Queen's. Under the retelling of her and co-director Vincent Paronnaud, black and white drawings do not just acquire personalities, they acquire souls and spirits.
This movie is a showcase of one of those things that only animation can do: boil a story down to its essence in the manner of a Moorish Alchemist. No amount of live action, however well done, will be able to render so starkly the brutality of the Shah's troops, so lovingly and so beautifully the minor irritances of first love, and the way that the tragedy of heartbreak segues into the childish petulances of resentment, and the freedom and bewilderment of a life adrift.
"Persepolis" is a wonderful, humane and bittersweet film, simply put, an experience to be treasured.
Rusty