Living & Arts

Not your typical Pixar toon

In print | February 14, 2008

While everyone appreciates a good movie about the foolish hijincks of talking fish/rats/cars/toys/bugs, it’s always refreshing to be reminded that Pixar doesn’t have a death-grip on all that is animated and that all that is animated doesn’t have to be about the breathtakingly rendered misadventures of anthropomorphized things that are cuddly (and yes, through the magic of Pixar, fish, bugs and rats count). “Persepolis” uses animation in a way that sadly, in America, you won’t find outside the art house. Filmmaker Marjane Satrapi intends not to delight the eye or to amuse children, but to pour out her personal story in a style just as much her own.

Though the film is in black and white, the content is anything but. Satrapi, with the help of co-director/co-writer Vincent Paronnaud, constructs a fluid narrative of her life, starting as a young child on the eve of the Iranian revolution and continuing through her early adulthood. She resists turning her life into the cliché that is the American media’s representation of the Middle East and its inhabitants.

Though Satrapi’s life is chronicled in all of its peaks and troughs, including her youthful rebellion against the Iranian religious authorities, her misadventures with love and her struggle with depression, the film avoids dealing in melodrama. You’ll find none of the wailing and the gnashing of teeth that would normally accompany the telling of a life such as hers. We’re used to viewing the Middle East through a lens that is entirely political and heavily colored by current events. “Persepolis” makes no attempt to avoid these categories — Marjane’s opinions of Iran and the West are quite clear — but the story is ultimately more about the struggling people in it than the events that surround them.

“Persepolis” is like an extended rumination on a life that Satrapi herself has not yet totally processed; a series of memories that gain new life and new purpose through the re-telling. You can see the author’s mind at work, trying to fit the bits and pieces together, but not always coming up with a clear vision. The storytelling is sometimes fragmented and episodic, but that serves to make the entire venture more human. She conveys a heartfelt need to tell this tale, even if she herself may not know entirely what to make of it.

“Persepolis” is adapted from Satrapi’s graphic novel and it retains much of the feel of the original medium. As in many graphic novels, the deceptively childish style at first registers incongruously with the story — how can these flat and heavy lines do a person’s life justice? Yet Satrapi’s clear, simple and graceful figures are all that she needs for the task. Her sense of humor comes through in the movie’s cartoonishness and casual embrace of slapstick. The menace of violence lurks in the picture’s heavy shadows, rarely revealing itself, but is often there. The visuals pull back from trying to deal with large events and instead concentrate mostly on the personal.

As the visual style highlights, “Persepolis” is relentlessly unpretentious, at times to the point of being pedestrian. While it always feels awkward to judge a piece of art that reflects someone’s biography, Satrapi’s story can become repetitive — her rebelliousness, her detachment from the culture around her, her relations with men — all these themes repeat cyclically throughout the film. And all are presented to the reader in the same blunt deadpan, as if to say, “Here it is. Take it or leave it.” As a result, you always sort of feel on the verge of feeling something, you never quite get to.

At the same time, this upfront style is part of Satrapi’s appeal. While her life seems full of ambivalence, it is offered up so confidently and so unabashedly that the presence of the author radiates from the film. Satrapi may not be comfortable in her own skin, but she is completely at ease laying bare her soul in front of an audience. Not to go all Intro to Film on you, but she authoritatively commands the viewer’s gaze — her blunt presentation and acknowledgement of the ambiguities and failings of her character and actions refuse us the power to judge her or objectify her — she simply is what she is.

“Persepolis” has a quiet poignancy, depth and beautiful simplicity — a unique offering in a genre that has been so narrowly explored in commercial cinema. It’s a pity that all that will prevent it from finding a wide audience in America is its old-school animation and critical dearth of talking rats.