Bitter, sweet

Among her many other talents, the graphic novelist Marjane Satrapi has shown a skill for moving fluidly from one medium to another. A few years ago Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud co-directed a film version of her most famous book Persepolis, an autobiographical story about her childhood in Iran under the shadow of the Islamic Revolution. I liked the film but I had one reservation: it was too often a straightforward cinematic presentation of the drawings Satrapi had done for the book. Though there were a few well-chosen moments of added animation — such as an Expressionist scene where little Marjane’s features melt until she resembles the screamer in the famous Munch painting — the viewing experience was repetitive for a reader who was already very familiar with the book (as I was).

I was much happier with Satrapi’s decision to turn her book Chicken with Plums (original title Poulet aux Prunes) into a (mostly) live-action film. The movie, shown recently at Cinefan, is beautifully shot, cleverly structured and anchored by an extraordinary performance by French actor Mathieu Amalric as a depressed, middle-aged violinist named Nasser-Ali — based on a distant relative of Satrapi in 1950s Tehran — who decides to end his life. That doesn’t sound like an upbeat story, and indeed the film makes a point of confirming early on that Nasser-Ali does die: a shot of his funeral is followed by a series of flashbacks that take us through his final eight days, as well as flashbacks within flashbacks that recount various earlier stories, including a tragic love affair that aided his artistic growth but also cast a black shadow over his personal life.

What is really fascinating is the film’s consistently whimsical tone and its many quaint asides, such as the scene where Nasser-Ali is visited by the talkative Angel of Death, Azrael. Chicken with Plums is a demonstration of how a movie can begin on a farcical, even buffoonish, note but gradually reveal its secrets so that — without the viewer even realising it — a deeply moving portrait of an individual and his society emerges. And yet, the light-hearted tone is never completely forsaken. Certain characters — such as Nasser-Ali apparently sullen, shrewish wife — are presented unflatteringly at first, and only later shown in a more poignant light. There are jokes about death, as in the sequence where he mulls and rejects various suicide options (being discovered with a plastic bag over one’s head would not be very dignified, would it?).

The tone sometimes tilts into over-the-top slapstick: one scene has vignettes from the crass, Middle American life destined for Nasser-Ali’s son Cyrus, who will grow up to become a product of 1970s pop culture, marrying his cheerleader girlfriend when he accidentally gets her pregnant, and then watching goggle-eyed when he learns that his own daughter has a bun in the oven. This is broad caricature, but under it is the suggestion that Cyrus’s life may not have taken this turn if his father had been a happier, more fulfilled man. A personal tragedy echoes across time, affecting the lives of generations of people and spawning its own mini-histories.

Chicken with Plums allows a viewer to laugh at certain aspects of a situation that is essentially tragic; at times it might even seem that we are laughing at Nasser-Ali himself. But the mirth is less particular, more inclusive than that; it is about how the profound and the ridiculous constantly coexist in human lives. There is a running gag about Nasser-Ali being interrupted by an inappropriate sound whenever he is about to say something meaningful — these scenes are reminders of the many banana peels strewn on the road of our lives, waiting to trip us up and make us look silly just as we are constructing grand narratives or making life-changing decisions. But that doesn’t make us pathetic, only human, and this film is gently, wonderfully cognisant of this.

Jai Arjun Singh is a Delhi-based writer