Princess of Persia

>> Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud
on their beautiful, resonant adaptation of the coming-of-age graphic novel Persepolis

by MARK SLUTSKY

Marjane Satrapi’s Persepolis is one of a few graphic novels to really break out of the comic world and be treated as serious literature, at least in North America. Originally published in instalments in France (where comics enjoy a level of respect artists here can only dream of), the book, not unlike Art Spiegelman’s Maus, is a highly personal story of growing up while shouldering the weight of war and history. Like Maus, it uses details from the author’s family history and own experience to tell a story that’s universally resonant.

Persepolis tells, in simple black and white, the story of Satrapi’s childhood and adolescence in Iran (and later, Europe). Growing up in the 1970s, she and her family lived through the persecutions of the Shah, the Islamic Revolution (when the French Lycée-attending Satrapi was introduced to the headscarf) and the Iran-Iraq War.

The book gives special insight into what it was like to grow up in Iran in the 1970s, opening a window into a country that most Westerners, especially now, are ignorant about. It’s the details that stand out, set in relief against the larger, often bloody changes happening around her: listening to Mötley Crüe tapes, illicit parties in friends’ apartments, trying to get around the religious police. In short, it’s as much a story about growing up as anything else.

And now it’s an acclaimed film. Co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, the movie version of Persepolis is an animated retelling of Satrapi’s story, still (mostly) in beautiful black and white. Featuring the voices of Chiara Mastroianni and Catherine Deneuve, it’s received raves since its premiere at the Cannes festival, where it won the Jury Prize, and attracted some negative attention from the Iranian government, which sent a letter to the French Embassy in Tehran protesting the Cannes screening.

Satrapi and Parronaud spoke to the Mirror at the 2007 Toronto International Film Festival.

Mirror: Tell me about the process of collaboration, and how you brought the book to the screen.

Vincent Paronnaud: There’s always a risk in taking a good book and making a movie. It could have been a bad idea, because it’s an excellent book and you don’t know what could happen. So we were aware of that problem and spent a lot of time thinking about the best way to deal with that. For me, it was worse, because it dealt with Marjane’s life. So, we asked many questions—what to add, what to keep or what to remove from the book. I actually re-read the book—Marjane didn’t have to do that—but then we put it aside and started it like a new project.

M: It sort of feels like you went back and rewrote it from scratch.

Marjane Satrapi: Absolutely, because it’s not the same form. It’s a very bad idea to think that there is any relationship between comics and movies. There is no relationship. They’re two different media. It’s not a storyboard. It’s being extremely condescending to the comic to compare it to a storyboard of a movie! A comic is an end unto itself. We were very aware of that. Surprisingly, Vincent was much more attached to the books than myself. And probably because he’s a real gentleman and he’s extremely delicate, and extremely protective with me, he didn’t want to frustrate me in any way. So he was like, “Oh, should we keep that?” At the beginning, he was walking on eggshells and then once he stopped walking on eggshells, he ran really fast! He went very, very far! (laughing) Uncontrollable! But the whole fun of working with him is that he’s a great spirit, he’s a great artist.

M: Why did you choose to use colour for some sequences?

VP: We used colour for many reasons. The first reason is that the colour in the flashbacks allows us to separate more from the book. Because it’s a different point of view from the book, and we love flashbacks. They’re a good way for us to put a separation between the book and the movie, and it’s easier for our narration, to create the ellipsis. In the film, we talk more about exile, it’s more like an exile movie. There is something very melancholic about it.

MS: There’s some nostalgia, yeah.

VP: When we worked on the project, Marjane was very sad at the time. I think that’s why the movie took this direction.

CARTOON COLLABORATION: Paronnaud and Satrapi

Not an autobiography

M: Was the book published in Iran?

MS: No.

M: Do you think this movie will ever be shown there?

MS: Not officially, certainly not.

M: Have you heard reactions from people there who have managed to read it or see it?

MS: It’s been a long time since I’ve lived in Iran so whatever information I have is second-hand and I don’t trust second-hand information. I want to see things with my own eyes and then I talk about it. I don’t trust anything that I hear.

M: What was it like to return to your life again and transpose it into a completely different medium?

MS: It’s boring (laughs). I mean, it’s challenging. But I’m using my life to talk about something else. That’s why I don’t like calling it an autobiographical film, because normally an autobiography is a book when you have problems with the people in your surroundings and instead of going and telling them your problems, you make a book and you sulk. This is not what I’m doing!

I’m using my story to talk about something else. I just take it to a personal level because first of all, I’m not a historian and a politician—far from that—and second of all, the thing that is the most important is the individual, the human being. I am not a preacher, and Vincent isn’t a preacher either. If you put it on a personal level, then it changes completely. So it was very important to do it this way. I didn’t have any other way of doing it. I would have had to make a history book!

VP: That’s why we did it as an animated movie too. Because our interest wasn’t in realism, but the issues we wanted to talk about. That’s what was important for us. The life story of Marjane is the ground for our message. We ask that people think about these issues, that’s the most important.

Bad people are international

M: What issues do you want people to think about?

MS: To put the human being in the centre of attention. To consider that the other, that they’re so scared of, is human like them. To understand how things change in a place and how one person has to grow up dealing with all of that. If they can relate to that, that’s enough. Because the problem is that when you reduce people like me to an abstract notion of fanatics, terrorists, whatever, an “other,” the danger is that you no longer believe that we are human beings just like you. And it is very easy to go and bomb us, and kill 300 of us every day, because we are no longer human beings.

It’s extremely dangerous to put a name on evil because if you name the evil, it is the basis of fascism. If they say the people here are bad people, then we go and exterminate them. It’s not like that! Bad people are international! The stupid man is international! It doesn’t belong to some ethnic group or some part of the world. It’s everywhere. So this is the right question to ask, because here we are entering this area, into this condescension of the West that we are the best and all that. I mean come on, other people are people too, and we are the perfect example of that. This fucking clash of the cultures is bullshit! Here (gesturing to Vincent) is a man and a woman. Here is a French and an Iranian. It’s a question of intelligence. There are some people of my country who are completely foreign to me. It’s a question of having the same intelligence. You are a Canadian, I’m talking to you. You understand what I’m talking about, so this is fine. And if you understand that, it leaves a little bit of hope for the future.

Persepolis opens this
Friday, Jan. 11