Persepolis

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Persepolis, directed by Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud and based on Satrapi’s graphic novel of the same name, hits theaters on Christmas. The animated film is based on Satrapi’s experiences growing up during the Islamic Revolution in Iran, bumming around Europe, and of course coming to valuable realizations about nationality, gender, and family.

In many ways it’s a traditional coming-of-age tale, but with a few fresh twists. Persepolis maintains much of the episodic, meandering quality common to graphic novels, which works both for and against the film. The final product succeeds, mainly due to the way that the simple hand-drawn aesthetic illustrates deceptively simple childhood memories. The amusing misadventures of precocious young Marji play like a darkly self-aware Pinocchio. Comic moments bely the seriousness of the issues that surface in the film. Truly gut-wrenching scenes of her activist relatives being imprisoned and killed are buttressed by sequences that poke fun at the absurdity of fascism. In one scene, Marji is forced to buy cassette tapes of Iron Maiden and Michael Jackson from trench-coated street pushers.

But can it stop World War III? More thoughts after the jump:

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