Rough Draft of the Movie Review

With every caption written out, this story of a young Iranian girl’s unique journey captured my heart. Though the character’s voiceovers are in French I still feel as if they are talking to me because of the change in tone they have and how it follows the moods of the scene. The story of the first half of Persepolis showed the lives of Marji and her family through several important stages in the history of Iran, and it gave us the perspective of the other sides of the issues and of the people of Iran. Personally for me it showed that not all Iranians are terrorists and fall under the usual stereotypes. Having read the graphic novel, many things were added into the movie and many things were left out. I feel like many important aspects of the family life that were in the book were left out of the movie. I feel that if you are going to make a movie on a memoir of that style you should not leave out important details that made the comic such an enjoyable read. I also felt they focused too much on the second half of the story which focused more on her being tossed as an outsider in Europe instead of her losing her identity as a Iranian because of her selfishness and self-centeredness.

The special effects used in the movie match the comic book which is great I feel. They are the exact same images that I see when I read the book which makes it more believable and helps me remember back to the book for things they left out or the meaning that I was able to take out of it. Because the movie moves so quickly and has captions as subtitles for non French speakers, it is a good idea to read the comic to get the full story and to be able to capture the full meaning and image that the basic picture that you see gives you. The beauty that I see in the simplicity of the comic pictures and the movement of it through the movie helps show how simple life was to the Iranians and it helped develop the inner feelings that were supposed to be drawn out of the viewer.

Overall I felt the movie represented the book in a very good fashion, especially when it came down to the use of the moving image of the family. In the book, whenever there was use of a whole page for one picture it meant something important was going on in Marji’s head and it was again brought out very well in the movie.