dissidents destroyed, women disinfranchised, loyalists demoralized, revolutionaries demagogue…erized?  and i bet the pricks had something against alliteration as well.  but you can’t blame the iranians for the troubles of their tumultuous transition… i’m sorry, i really ought to slow down the assonance.  i’ve just been in such a lyrical mood lately, cause i sort of really like this girl.  it’s just so funny, you know, i don’t normally watch cartoons depicting the tragic derailing of a mid-eastern nation’s path toward self-governance, self-actualization, by foreign powers, from the perspective of one particularly precocious young lady… i really only went because of rebecca.  oh my she is a lovely girl.  it was her idea, and i leapt at it with reckless abandon.  PERSEPOLIS!  i speak your name loudly and with great portent! 
 
yeah, so, the movie; i’m sure i have some very compelling thoughts about the movie.  i know we talked about it afterward… or, she talked about it, and i stared wide-eyed and open-mouthed as she articulated her observations.  so sad she said, such a sad story.  my heart ached at the thought that she could, at any moment, experience anything resembling sadness; i will buy you maccaroni and cheese, rebecca, and i will feed you beer and wine and order maraschino cherries… bushels upon bushels of them, don’t be sad. 
 
i bought her red vines and clementine izze.  she was delighted to see them waiting for her when we met at the harvard exit.  we sat to the side of the center aisles; we sat distanced from the other people likely there to indulge the story of marjane satrapi.  i think that’s why she was there, too.  i was there to pretend like i was there for persepolis.  i was not… not really at all.  oh, but… it was, really very well done?  okay, i noticed a few things, and i suppose i’ll put the reviewer’s hat on for the moment:
 
the animation, at times both elegant and elementary.  where the characters are concerned, they demonstrate an awkwardness, all of them.  whether functionaries of the repressive shah, or revolutionaries of the new fundamentalist regime-to-be, or capable parents shepharding their children through these travails so great in number, they are all emotive and expressive, but they are only cartoons.  i do not fault the film for its animation, not in the least.  i can not be budged, however, where the effect of this softening influences the reality of such a story known quite well to be a brutal and pointless duel of martyrs.  the blood and body parts of the dead and dying will not affect you the way, oh, say… saving private ryan might?  apples and oranges?  absolutely, but tell me that animation isn’t a euphemism employed here to spare you the horrors satrapi elicits from her memory with pen and ink.  there are many moments that the art will subtly give you pause; it is beautiful, alternating between color and black & white with the story’s pace and literal timeframe.  you will feel the compelling nature of the content only through the vocal talents behind the production.  you will shed a tear or two when she appeals to her parents to allow her to return home without asking any questions, and how they so faithfully adhere to their word.
 
you will feel satrapi’s frustration with each of her methods of defiance.  when iron maiden kicks in you will find yourself hoisting your fist in the air and kicking the seat in front of you, pissing off that yuppie shithead, the one who’s there to condescend to co-workers who never bothered to develop an interest in foreign films.  ruin his experience, and you will share something with satrapi, i should expect.  feel it when she finally realizes that nihilists are a useless addition to one’s attempts at enhancing the social ambience.  share her anger and disappointment when her first love turns out to be a damn dirty H-mo; or when the next love turns out to be that not-so-freshest feeling personified… the girl had some messed up shit happen to her, or so we are led to believe by this better-than-southpark animated depiction. 
 
and you will likely leave the theater with the impression that you can’t dismiss everyone from the middle-east as some sort of irrational, rag-headed, capitalist killer… right?  i mean, have we started that trend yet?  i think maybe we have, and i’m on the trolley.  i’ll still give the guy in the turban a tip if he cabs me home in the most efficient manner, and i don’t assume he’s come to this country from a place that’s never known the concept of progress, or plurality, or lived anywhere else that’s committed such sinister acts to suppress both.  i’ll give him extra if he doesn’t spend too much time watching rebecca and i make out in the backseat all the way to my lavishly decorated, garden-level home.
 
the revolution was for something, wasn’t it?  well, i can hang out with the girl of my dreams in public, and i won’t end up hanging for it.  persepolis might ask you to consider that.  the fundamentalist mores of modern iran have not yet eradicated the memories of those who remember a time when things like humanity, humility, and the capacity for love could exist so freely.  delicately balanced, that… compliance mixed with defiant nostalgia.

the grandmother seems pre-occupied with penises… fair warning.