Persepolis

The inevitable adaptation of the graphic novel into the feature-length animated film. As with all adaptations, it is best to proceed with a kind of double focus. I am not of the school that adaptations should merely "succeed on their own," because I take the translation between media seriously, nor am I made of stone.

Many will wonder why an animated feature, already dubbed into French, could not have been recorded by English or American actors for our shores. The only justifications are 1) money-saving, 2) the prestige of a "foreign film," and 3) artistic necessity. Probably it was a mix of all three. Many of the lines are clearly intended to be delivered in French--it is not, that is, the Persian of Marjane Satrapi's childhood which is being translated into French; the *emotions* and tics here are decidedly French. But, most of that is lost in the subtitles. An idiomatic English-dub would have preserved more than is lost. As it is, if you cannot understand some French, you will likely find it a bit Babar-esque.

The animation itself looks fantastic: it is the graphic novel "come to life." One never feels far from the paneled world of the comic, and yet the movements and scenes are gorgeous and not at all "sketchy." Most animated films today (and this should still be said) are ruined by computer-animation and "rendering" techniques that miss the whole point. Persepolis at least understands what it is to be a cartoon. This is all the more to its advantage, because the illustration does cute kid, puppet shah, sexy 20-something, riot/massacre, and historical summary all very deftly, in different styles but without seeming to be so.

Alas, the movie is too long, and runs out of steam fairly early. As with the graphic novels, part one (her childhood in Iran) is more interesting than part two (an adolescence in Europe and early 20s in Iran). Because it is a memoir, I suppose I can't critique the narrative structure so much, but the pay-off here is very slight. And although adult Marjane has the best scene (an inept, heavily-accented singalong to "Eye of the Tiger" w/ training montage), she mostly loses out to her earlier, cuter incarnation.

In short, I have read three graphic novels in my life, and the other two (Fun Home and Maus) were both better than Persepolis. They probably could not be made into as successful films as Persepolis, because Fun Home treads the same narrative territory over and over, and Maus is split into two stories forty years apart, but overlapping. Persepolis is straightforward and lends itself to this sort of thing (a film version), and if the film captures nearly all the charm of the graphic novels, it also keeps their flawed structure and the drifting of the audience's sympathy and interest.