I have never seen any type of animated film like Satrapi and Paronnaud’s 2007 film Persepolis. In general, most animated films are created for children, such as many of the Disney classics. Meanwhile, Persepolis is animated film more geared to adults. In a traditional animated film there is always a happy ending that deals with being true to yourself and finding your true love. Usually, these films involve prince and princesses, magic, evil witches, and so on. In contrast, Persepolis deals with a personal story blended with historical events. Although it wasn’t exactly based on a specific person’s true story it could very might have happened to someone. Thus, due to the realism of the plot, viewers can develop a personal connection to the story. With such a complex story being told in animation, I found it very interesting how the animation was created with simple shapes and basic colors. This helped to focus more on the importance of the story at hand instead of being distracted by textures and colors.
I also was surprised that this was an animated film but it helped make the complex plot more simple with black and white shapes. It was unusual to watch animation smoke cigarettes since I am also use to animation involving princesses and happily ever after stories. I feel also if the director was to make this film with humans, it would have been more difficult since there are so many characters and different places that Marjane went to. It would also be harder to shoot scenes like when the shadows of Marjane and her grandmother were talking but the action was being done inside her head. I have no idea how the director would have decided to shoot that.
I also agree the simplicity of the colors and textures in the film were integral to aid the viewers in focusing on the complex plot. I originally had to watch this film in a middle east studies class and out of all the texts and sources we looked at in class, Persepolis was definitely was the easiest to understand because of its use of a personal narrative and simple animation. A use of colors and textures very similar to Persepolis is the graphic novel Maus by Art Spiegelman. While I do not believe that novel has been made into a film yet, the same concept of utilizing color to depict the present and then black and white to depict the past also happens as Spiegelman tells the story of the Holocaust through his father’s narrative.