Persepolis

Introduction

Broadly speaking, graphic novels tend to split into two categories: fiction, dominated by such books as Alan Moore's V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Frank Miller's Sin City series and the entire Marvel and DC universes; the other category is factual such as Art Speigelman's Maus, Harvey Pekar's American Splendor, Joe Sacco's Palestine and Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

The two Persepolis books tell Satrapi's experiences of growing up in pre- and post-revolution Iran and her time living in Europe, especially France where she now resides. Together with fellow comic book artist Vincent Paronnaud, she adapted the books into a screenplay and directed the animated feature film.

Persepolis begins in a French Airport where Marjane is preparing to fly home to Tehran and, for the first time in years, dons a headdress and remembers her time as a nine year obsessed with Bruce Lee and punk. The flashback continues as she grows up, rebels, experiences the crackdown of the Shah, the short lived glory of revolution and her journey to Europe when her lifestyle threatens to get her into serious trouble.

The film was a critical success which included winning the Grand Jury Prize at Cannes and being nominated for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2008 Academy Awards.

Video

Persepolis is largely show in stark monochrome, with only a few shades of grey and colour in the European sections. Marjane Satrapi's animation style is very basic, but works very well at showing the theme of the film, from the drab black and white of Iran to the colour and promise of Europe. You wouldn't know it from the quality but the film was entirely hand drawn and only transferred to computer at the last stage.

The 1080p picture is beautifully sharp, with deep inky blacks, providing great contrast whilst the colours are vibrant and clear.

*The pictures contained in this review are for illustrative purposes only and do not reflect the image quality of the disc.*

Audio

There are English and French DTS-HD tracks and English subtitles to accompany the French sound; these are dubtitles, matching the English dub word for word. This is a dialogue dominated film, with the surrounds used sparsely but everything is crystal clear.

I listened to both tracks and, while both are excellent, I preferred the French audio with subtitles as that was the language in which it was written and the dialogue matched the animation of the mouths. The English dub has an all-star cast including Catherine Deneuve, Sean Penn, Gena Rowlands and Iggy Pop. Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve provide the voices of Marjane and her mother in both English and French, which helps the quality of the dubtrack.

Extra Features

All the supplementrary material is presented in 576p and English subtitles appear when necessary.

Raging Blues is a 6 minute short film by Vincent Paronnaud and is an interesting silent animated film.

There are interviews with Joe Sacco (19 minutes), Vincent Paronnaud (36 minutes), Brian K. Vaughan (20 minutes) and Gena Rowlands (12 minutes). The comic book artists (Sacco, Paronnaud and Vaughan) talk about how they became involved in writing comic books, Persepolis (both the books and the film) and comic books in general, whereas Gena Rowlands speaks more specifically about her voicing of the grandmother and her opinion of comic books in general.

La Face Cachée de Persepolis (The Hidden Side of Persepolis) is a 30 minute Making Of which covers the voice recording, animation and the Foley mixing. It was interesting to learn that Chiara Mastroianni's rendition of Eye of the Tiger was supposed to be off key and it's not just a case of her being tone deaf!

As extra features go, this is a better than average set telling you almost everything you need to know about Marjane, Persepolis and the factual part of the comic book scene.

Conclusion

At the 2008 Oscars Persepolis lost out to Ratatouille for the Best Animated Feature award and, although this is a more intelligent and thought provoking piece of work, I enjoyed it less than Pixar's film. Persepolis is a 'grower', I liked it more watching it last night than I did at the cinema and will probably find more to like about this the more I watch it.

Sticking with the Ratatouille comparison, Persepolis does not have the stunning visuals (but the animation is faithful to the source material) and complex sound design of Brad Bird's film but the characters are richer, the story more relevant and it is a niche rather than mainstream film. It's partly an educational film, providing information about the formation of modern day Iran and life under a dictatorship so is a deep and rich experience whilst still being funny, charming and moving.

If you fancy broadening your horizons beyond the standard animated fare or a fan of realistic graphic novels (and their film adaptations such as American Splendor or Ghost World) then this is at least worth a rent but, given how I appreciate it more with each viewing, would recommend it as an addition to anyone's collection.