So there comes a time in all of our movie watching carrer’s (or hobbies in my case) where we all have to take a hit. Sometimes it is having to watch a Uwe Boll movie, sometimes it’s having to watch a painfully terrible parody movie along the lines of “Scary Movie”. For me I had to pop that virginity bubble by watching the international indie film Persepolis. Don’t get me wrong. This is a fine film and the ideas that it presents are very valid. But I can’t say that I enjoyed my time with the film.
The story is about a woman named Marjane who is looking back on her life and what went wrong and oddly, how nothing went the way she wanted. The main story takes place in 1978 Iran, at the height of the civil conflict within the country. Marjane is a young girl at this point of the story and is being influenced by her family and parents about what is right and what is wrong. As a child there are several traumatizing experiences that she goes through. A good example is when she sees her house blown to smithereens by a random bombing run. Thankfully her family was out for the time being and she was coming back from school. Her neighbors were not as lucky. The story continues that her parents shipping her off to Europe because it just wasn’t safe for her at that time. There she learned a lot of valuable life lessons and “skills” as well as seeing what other cultures are like. Eventually she gets tired of being lost and confused in the foreign country and calls her parents to send her home. Back home she decides to take the initiative and attend University and to get married and build a family. Without spoiling too much lets just say she’s not too successful in that prospect.
As a historical commentary, Persepolis is an incredibly impactful film showing the life of the average Tehran family as the social crisis blooms around them. And then again when the film brings Marjane to France to grow up. The scenes in France were particularly interesting when the art style brings up an interesting art style that’s very akin to the Beatles “Yellow Submarine” cartoon.
That said, the story just was very bland. There were no real twists or turns, or any real sort of character development. The writing is very poor really because there was no depth to the characters. Everyone acted as you would have expected them to act. One of the saving graces about the film is the acting. I do like how they used the French language to portray the story. I really find languages other than English are extremely effective in it’s emotionally execution.
With a subpar plot and an ending worth of being on the lines of the Halo 2 ending, Persepolis really has nothing going for it. To say that the acting is decent is stretching it. Really the only takeaway that I see is that the art style is very unique. I don’t recommend watching Persepolis unless you are a hardcore indie film watcher. Perhaps when my movie tastes age, I’ll come back to it and enjoy it for what it is, but there’s not enough meat on this bone to enjoy.
Netflix Predicted Rating: 3.9/5
My Rating: 2/5
