fallen/legen blog
Dienstagsfilm – Within this category we would like to recommend one movie a week to you, one movie that we consider special and inspiring, one movie that we think you might enjoy to watch on a cosy evening in front fo your DVD player.
[youtube width=”500″ height=”300″]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PXHeKuBzPY[/youtube]
Last week we caught a glimpse what the live of ordinary Iranians looks like in a state and political system that might be not so ordinary and common. What brings up the question how ordinary people, how an ordinary people can end up with a political system and society that is unordinary enough to pose as the archetype of evil in a high percentage of western evening news flashes. In short, and more ordinary ( 🙂 ) terms: It is time for a short lesson in the recent history of Iran. And who would be qualified better for this job then somebody who actually witnessed the whole thing? Somebody like Marjane Satrapi, the Iranian comic author and artist who wrote and drew both the comic and later the movie “Persepolis”.
“Persepolis” is an auto-biographical piece both about the first 30 years of Marjane Satrapis life and the last 30 years in the history of Iran. And it is this duality between the little auto-biography and the big history that makes “Persepolis” a storytelling masterpiece. While Marjanes live is at times quite eventful, it is her storyline, that, by following the story of a single person, herself, about the whole span of the movie, provides a simple one-dimensional guide, a clothesline, that the author Marjane uses masterly to bring some order into the complex mess that history, especially recent history, sometimes is. She does not try to give a comprehensive or detailed overview about recent events in Iran, she simply tells the most important anecdotes from her life and by that succeeds at giving the viewer a more comprehensive overview than any detail heavy documentary could do. All the work of the author, selection, reduction, ordering is already done by her, in the natural process of remembrance, maybe this is what makes her narrative so strong.
PS: For the sake of Danielle Darrieuxs awesome grandmotherness, watch the movie in french.
Persepolis | Marjane Satrapi | Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve, Danielle Darrieux, Simon Abkarian | 2007 | 2.4.7. Films | imdb, Wikipedia
