Persepolis
Jan. 14th, 2008 02:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
magidWarning: possible spoilers.
Yesterday I went to see the movie version of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis. It's the story of her childhood in and out of Iran, as the Shah was deposed and Muslim right-wing groups came to power. I loved the book, and had high hopes for the movie.
Amazingly (for me, anyway), the movie lived up to my expectations. Surpassed them, actually. Usually I have a hard time with movie versions of books, but this was wonderful. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I already knew what the visual style would be, how people would look, and so on, so there wasn't any dissonance between how I think $Character should be, and how the director/actor chose to portray $Character. And because a graphic novel carries a lot of its information visually already, so the translation to film is more about adding motion to extant visuals than about subtracting plot. In this case, anyway, since it was going from a black and white graphic novel to a mostly black and white animated movie (there was some color, used for emphasis at times, but it wasn't frequent).
The plot is pretty much the same as the book, though I think there was a bit more backstory about the situation in Iran than the book had. Or perhaps it was condensed into one chunk, instead of being given in pieces; I'm not sure. It left me feeling that I had a better idea of the flow of events, and how close the might-have-been of another government in the Middle East not run along religious lines.
The animation is great. The style followed Satrapi's drawings, and the artists who made them move and gave them sound are impressive, things like the backstory bits having the feel of a cardboard puppet show, or the American political figure speaking French with a horribly American accent (It's a dubbed movie; I was surprised by how much of the French I was able to catch, though I definitely needed the subtitles.), or including lots of little details like an inchworm in a garden. Just stunning. (Some scenes made me think of Jan Pienkowski's silhouette pictures for Joan Aiken's A Necklace of Raindrops, which I have adored since I was small. And going to find his name shows that there's a new edition of that book out with someone else's illustrations! That's just wrong.)
edit How could I forget the animation-ized bit of Godzilla?/edit
I was pleased that the 3:40 showing at the Kendall yesterday was so full; I hope it does well enough in its limited release to get to more theaters. Two thumbs up.
Yesterday I went to see the movie version of Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel Persepolis. It's the story of her childhood in and out of Iran, as the Shah was deposed and Muslim right-wing groups came to power. I loved the book, and had high hopes for the movie.
Amazingly (for me, anyway), the movie lived up to my expectations. Surpassed them, actually. Usually I have a hard time with movie versions of books, but this was wonderful. I think a lot of it had to do with the fact that I already knew what the visual style would be, how people would look, and so on, so there wasn't any dissonance between how I think $Character should be, and how the director/actor chose to portray $Character. And because a graphic novel carries a lot of its information visually already, so the translation to film is more about adding motion to extant visuals than about subtracting plot. In this case, anyway, since it was going from a black and white graphic novel to a mostly black and white animated movie (there was some color, used for emphasis at times, but it wasn't frequent).
The plot is pretty much the same as the book, though I think there was a bit more backstory about the situation in Iran than the book had. Or perhaps it was condensed into one chunk, instead of being given in pieces; I'm not sure. It left me feeling that I had a better idea of the flow of events, and how close the might-have-been of another government in the Middle East not run along religious lines.
The animation is great. The style followed Satrapi's drawings, and the artists who made them move and gave them sound are impressive, things like the backstory bits having the feel of a cardboard puppet show, or the American political figure speaking French with a horribly American accent (It's a dubbed movie; I was surprised by how much of the French I was able to catch, though I definitely needed the subtitles.), or including lots of little details like an inchworm in a garden. Just stunning. (Some scenes made me think of Jan Pienkowski's silhouette pictures for Joan Aiken's A Necklace of Raindrops, which I have adored since I was small. And going to find his name shows that there's a new edition of that book out with someone else's illustrations! That's just wrong.)
edit How could I forget the animation-ized bit of Godzilla?/edit
I was pleased that the 3:40 showing at the Kendall yesterday was so full; I hope it does well enough in its limited release to get to more theaters. Two thumbs up.
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no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 07:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 08:17 pm (UTC)My grandparents lived in Iran during the time period of the first book, which made it special to my brother and I.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 08:33 pm (UTC)What did your grandparents do in Iran? Were they there during the hostage crisis?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 08:50 pm (UTC)My grandfather was a chemical engineer at the time with BF Goodrich. My grandmother was a nurse. She ended up working as the school nurse at the American school in Tehran -- quite a switch from being a head nurse in a large Chicago hospital. Mr grandfather and her moved there so that my grandfather could build a plant. They stayed long enough that he also destroyed it before leaving, as you just don't leave working chemical plants in the middle of that much strife. None of their stories from this time make any sense, though. Here is a version of one of their stories that I wrote up (http://alekq.home.mindspring.com/2005/02/nana-and-grandpa.html). Usually if I retell enough stories that I know, most people wonder if they were in the CIA or something. While they were in Tehran, they vacationed in Cambodia. In 1973. Because they were "in the neighborhood."
My grandfather removed my grandmother from Iran before the hostage crises. He then worked at removing all of his employees and any Americans they knew. I guess there was ample warning that hostages were going to be taken. They killed their dogs, because there was not going to be anyone to take care of them after they left. Despite being banned from the state department after the Syria incident, he went there and tried to evacuate them as well, but they believed strongly that a US presence was needed. So he left himself after that. He's still mad to this day. He feels very strongly that he could have evacuated everyone, but they were too stubborn.
They left Tehran and went straight to Liberia after that, which has been at civil war since then.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 04:23 am (UTC)*laugh*
Well, Cambodia is within an epsilon ball of Iran... for fairly large values of epsilon :-)
Liberia! And do they bring civil war with them?
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Date: 2008-01-15 02:37 pm (UTC)I think that destroying the dogs upset them more than destroying the plant. They felt it was the most humane thing they could do for the dogs, but it was what they mentioned the most about leaving Iran.
Liberia! And do they bring civil war with them?
That's what we were afraid of when they moved back to the US, since they moved to Tenn. If there was ever a chance the south was going to rise again, it was while they were living there. After some of the stories I heard from my grandparents, I wouldn't be surprised if they installed Noriega.
We joke about it at work, since I had some problems getting my DOE clearance. I had to be reinterviewed, where they said at one point, "It seems that not only do you have a history of political discord, but you have an entire *family* history of political discord." OTOH, I got my DOD clearance in a week and a half. I was actually hoping at some time during the clearance processing that someone would say, "Ah...you are one of the Rowe's grandkids? Your grandmother had an untouched intelligence and your grandfather...he was good holding the gun."
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 04:01 pm (UTC)And this means... what? I could see that go either way.
(And while the stories may not add up, it's certainly a background of adventure and achievement... which is rather how I think of you, actually.)
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 04:58 pm (UTC)I was searching for the word unparalleled at the time and didn't find it.
(And while the stories may not add up, it's certainly a background of adventure and achievement... which is rather how I think of you, actually.)
Thank you. I take that as a great compliment. My grandmother did have a life like no other's. Besides her adventures, she was the first to graduate from her nursing school after getting married and went on to work most of her life. The last decade or two of her life, she taught nursing. I don't think we thought about her impact until she was dying and it became clear to us that many of the nurses taking care of her in the hospital had been her students.
no subject
Date: 2008-01-14 10:45 pm (UTC)Wait, it's dubbed and has subtitles?
no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 02:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-01-15 03:53 am (UTC)