persepolis

yes! a movie. indeed, this a 10/10 movie. i was very satisfied of how the movie went. well, aside that i don't understand french and i have to read the subs as fast as i can. nevertheless the message and ANIMATION were awesome. kinda the classic animation only it is smoother compared to the ones were used to. though it black and white, i found it very soothing for my eyes. i could get the idea shown and i never got lost on conversations. simple but elegant. and the message it brought, you could learn so much in this movie.(you can read the synopsis below).


SYNOPSIS:
Marjane Satrapi grew up wearing sneakers and beating up boys. She wanted to grow up to be a saint. When she was ten years old, her world changed overnight. Girls and boys had to use different doors to enter the school. She had to cover herself with a long dark robe. Grownups around her began to disappear. Marjane has several close encounters with the country's morality police and her teachers at school. Iraqi bombs fall on the street where she lives. Eventually her parents send her abroad to receive a European education, but she is miserable: she loves her family and country, despite their flaws, too much to stay away for long. After a brief return and a failed marriage, Marjane leaves Iran for good.

This is a heartbreaking true story of a childhood coinciding with regime change and war in Iran. It's a story that everyone who counts themselves as a human being should read or watch.





(comment from IMDB)I was somehow hesitant before watching this as many have hailed the movie as an achievement both technically and artistically. Considering it tackles issues related to the Middle East I thought this will be yet another politically correct show-off that leaves you dead-cold. Well it's nothing like this. Though the story simplifies things quite a lot, it has a good reason for doing so: everything is seen from the point of view of the main character who brings forth her memories as a little girl in Iran, as a teenager in exile and as a married woman back in Iran. The story is always interesting, heart-felt, funny, sarcastic at times, nostalgic, cruel and absurd at some points but very very convincing.

The movie's best asset is it doesn't preach, it leaves everything to the viewer's judgment, and this is something to be appreciated because we all know that cartoons can be very effective propaganda devices. You can use animation for subversive purposes in a may number of ways. Technically, the movie-makers decided for stylishness rather than anything else. It's very interesting to compare Ratatouille's "realism" in animation and its shallow plot and the intricate and subtle plot of Persepolis and its abstract animation. I think animation was never about a big budget but about taste and artistic reason for choosing a specific technique. Displaying such a consistent style throughout, Persepolis manages never to feel too much in spite of its length (Ratatouille felt a bit too much after half an hour, at least to me and most of the people in the audience). Mnay reasons account for this: good story, excellent acting (the characters are all memorable), excellent pacing etc.

The best thing I got from watching this, besides the 95 minutes of great fun, is that there is a way of separating between good and evil without hurting anybody and you can come to terms with your past without feeling a sense of despair, no matter how bad that past was.