The story begins in Iran in the late 1970s when Marjane (Gabrielle Lopes) is a precocious child who dreams of being a prophet for God. She lives with her parents (Catherine Deneuve and Simon Abkarian) and her grandmother (Danielle Darrieux), intellectuals with leftist leanings who are at first elated when the Shah loses power (one of the film’s funniest and most politically sharp scenes involves Marjane, picking up on her parents’ sentiments, marching around the living room chanting, “Down with the Shah! Down with the Shah!”). Unfortunately, the Shah is replaced by a fundamentalist Islamic regime that clamps down on the country, forcing the women to wear veils in public and generally suppressing any form of culture or behavior that might threaten its ideals.

As a teenager, Marjane (now voiced by Chiara Mastroianni) is sent by her parents to Vienna for schooling, where she falls in with a group of adolescent nihilists and goes through all the growing pains associated with the teenage years. She struggles and rebels, learns about love and loss, even takes to living on the streets for a while as she grapples with her identity and tries to find her place in the world. Central to this struggle is her ethnic heritage, which is a source of both pride and shame, especially in Austria where Iranians are viewed as “savages.” In this regard, the title of the film is extremely important in its evocation of the ancient ceremonial capital of the Persian Empire, the seat of Iranian pride. Marjane eventually returns to Iran and her family, gets married, and continues to struggle with her identity as a woman and an Iranian who yearns for more than her native country will allow.

The screenplay, which was written by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, both of whom codirected the film, has a natural arc as it traces Marjane’s life from precocious kid with a head full of dreams, to a sharpened young woman with the weight of experience. However, that arc unfolds through a primarily episodic structure, which provides a solid base for tracing both Marjane’s life and the shifting world around her. It only takes a few anecdotal moments--a pair of veiled women chastising Marjane for wearing Western style clothing and (heaven forbid!) a Michael Jackson pin, or the family having to rush home and dump out all their contraband alcohol before a group of machine-gun-wielding government thugs finds it--to convey the oppression of Iran under the Islamic regime and the liberating potential of what would otherwise be dismissed as pop-culture junk (never has rocking out to Iron Maiden with a tennis racquet guitar ever been so meaningful). By the same token, life in the West, where pop-culture junk is all too readily available, is no picnic either, as Marjane is continually misunderstood and unfairly judged by those around her who think they know what it means to be Iranian.

What is most miraculous about Persepolis is the way Paronnaud and Satrapi manage to balance the story’s often wildly divergent tones. The film is at times uproariously funny, and it has moments of beautifully wild abandon, such as when the teenage Marjane tears delightfully into her own off-key rendition of Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger.” At the same time, the film is a chilling depiction of the dangers of religious fundamentalism, and the scenes in Iran in the 1980s construct a sad portrait of a culture being slowly strangled. Marjane’s coming of age is wonderfully specific to her time and place, but it is also universal in the most meaningful sense. Satrapi originally wrote her graphic novels (although she prefers to the term “comic books”) to convey to those in the West what it is like to struggle with the identity crisis of being Iranian during a time of religious intolerance. The film version continues that mission with a rare elegance and power, marrying the funny and the painful in ways that will be recognizable to anyone.

Copyright ©2008 James Kendrick

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