micahsaul

Just got back from seeing “Persepolis” at the Embarcadero. Let me start by saying that it was absolutely awesome, incredibly enjoyable, and more than a little bit emotional. I highly recommend you go see it immediately.

Ok, now I’ve got that out of the way, I can talk about why I’m not sure this movie needed to be made. I’m happy it was made, but I’m not sure it needed to be. See, “Persepolis” is based on Marjane Satrapi’s incredible graphic novel of the same name, and is about her childhood in Iran during the fall of the Shah, the rise of the Ayatollah, and the Iran-Iraq war. The graphic novel is simply illustrated, powerfully written, and succeeds in personalizing and humanizing history in a way I’d only seen once before, in “Maus”.

Satrapi also wrote and directed the movie. The animation is black and white, in the exact style of the graphic novels. And therein lies the problem. The graphic novel could have been used as the storyboards for the movie. There are scenes in the movie where everything looks exactly like it did in the comic, with the exception that the characters here are moving. Nothing seemed to be added to the story by having moving images instead of static. Film and comics are different arts, and each medium can do things that the other cannot. This was not exploited in “Persepolis”.

I know, it seems somehow wrong, a comics fan complaining that a film was indistinguishable from the comic it was based on. Wasn’t that the highlight of “300″ and “Sin City”? That watching the film felt like reading the book? For the most part, yes. But those two movies had an advantage over “Persepolis”: real people. Though scenes in “Sin City”, the movie, were identical in look and feel to scenes in “Sin City”, the comic, they had live actors in them. I may get hatemail from Pixar fanboys here, but animation will never be as effective as live action in evoking empathy. The simple act of adding a real person into the mix changes “Sin City” enough that each version is distinct. With “Persepolis”, the two versions are the same.

Now, I’m not proposing that the movie would have been better had it been live action. What I am saying is merely that I wanted more from the movie. I wanted the movie to accept the fact that it was a movie adaptation, and could tell a slightly different story, could use the medium of film to do things that a comic can not do. And don’t get me wrong, there were certainly moments… the scene in which a group of men are fleeing from a co-ed party that is broken up by the Iranian police and run along the rooftops of Tehran was incredible, and created a tension on screen that it couldn’t have possibly done on the page. And the “Eye of the Tiger” routine was one of the highlights. But I wanted more. Maybe I’m being overly greedy, but I wanted more.

All that said, watch this and tell me you don’t want to rush out and see the movie right now!

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