Drawing on experience

Those fortunate enough to be among the 30 or so people attending a screening of Marjane Satrapi's Persepolis in Delhi any day last week (the film was shown in just two halls, and on one time slot, in the national capital) would have seen a remarkable animated feature.

Persepolis is special not because it marks a breathtaking advance in animation technology but quite the opposite: because it manages to be so gripping despite relying almost entirely on modest black-and-white woodcut sketches, and cartoons that at times evoke the educational shorts telecast on Doordarshan years ago.

But this is a deceptively simple work that operates on many layers, and in that sense, it closely resembles the two graphic novels it is adapted from: Satrapi's Persepolis: The Story of a Childhood and its sequel Persepolis 2: The Story of a Return. Both books were originally published in French and subsequently translated into English for a wider readership.

Together, they count among the most compelling achievements in modern comics, even though they eschew the complex storyboarding and out-of-panel gimmickry that you'll find in many graphic novels these days. Satrapi's drawings are mostly at the service of the narrative, but what a narrative it is!

The books tell the autobiographical tale of an Iranian girl growing up in the shadow of the 1979 Islamic revolution; her stay in Austria, where her parents send her at the age of 14 so she can escape an increasingly repressive regime; her return after four years to her home country; and the difficulties she faces as a headstrong young woman dealing with social hypocrisy.

In The Story of a Childhood, we meet little Marjane, her liberal, cosmopolitan parents and her spirited grandmother, all of whom help mould the girl's inquiring attitude towards life. As Tehran becomes more conservative under the new regime, their days are marked by small acts of rebellion, such as a determination to continue partying hard (behind black curtains, to prevent the neighbours from seeing what's going on in the house).

Marjane is a precocious child who participates in candid conversations with grown-ups, makes references to "dialectic materialism" (she read the comic-book version!) and has dreams featuring god and Karl Marx (they look similar, though Marx has curlier hair, she observes); she head-bangs to Iron Maiden records in her room and feels indignant about having to wear a veil at school. She is an instantly likable protagonist, and a very believable one too, so what if no more than a few curved lines are used to draw her face.

In The Story of a Return, Marjane grows up before our eyes; we watch her experience a succession of conflicting emotions