The Cartoon Grows Up

TV Ontario ran two animated features, Perspepolis and Mary and Max, on Saturday Night at the Movies on March 17. As usual, between features, they ran interview footage relating to the films. This segment features Oscar winner Chris Landreth (Ryan), Director and animator Robin Budd (Producing Parker, Ruby Gloom) and me.

Marjane Satrapi on Making a Film From Comics

Marjane Satrapi, author of Persepolis and the co-director of the animated version, gives her thoughts on making a film from comics.

"Animation and comics are false siblings. They resemble one another but they're two completely different things. The relationship a reader has with a comic is nothing like the one a viewer has with a film. When you read a comic, you're always active, because you have to imagine all the movements that happen between the frames. In a film, you are passive: all the information is there. And when you make a comic it never happens that you have 500 or 1,000 people reading it in the same place at the same time, all reacting. The language of cinema and comics is different, even though they both use images. In comics, you write with images; they're like pictograms. And in a movie you think about movement and sound and music, all those things that are not considerations when making comics."

Marjane Satrapi at the New York Film Festival

These are clips from a press conference after the screening of Perspeolis at the New York Film Festival. If you only watch one clip, make it the first where Satrapi talks about choosing animation over live action in order to increase audience identification with the characters.

Persepolis

Persepolis started as a graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It's autobiographical, relating her childhood in Iran during the period when the Shah was deposed and the government that replaced it was (and remains) an Islamic theocracy. This combination of a coming-of-age story set against political turmoil is what gives the story its power. Satrapi's family is politically liberal, so their position relative to the government was always precarious.

Marjane confronted for wearing a Michael Jackson button.

Persepolis is now an animated feature made in France, co-directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud. It's currently playing festivals (The Toronto International Film Festival and the Ottawa International Animation Festival, where I saw it and where it took the award for Best Animated Feature). It is due for release in North America in December in order to qualify for the Oscars. It has already been selected as France's Oscar entry for the category Best Foreign Language Film and of course it will be eligible for a nomination for Best Animated Feature.

The film is a successful adaptation of Satrapi's book and I highly recommend that you see it. Besides being a satisfying experience in itself, it stands in stark opposition to most Hollywood animated features. It's drawn animation. It's black and white. It deals with politics and the real world. It not only has a female protagonist, but as Satrapi is the screenwriter and co-director, it has a genuinely female point of view.

Marjane with her grandmother, one of the most vivid characters in the film.

All of the above qualities are nothing special in live action. I'm sure that the audiences who view Persepolis at live action film festivals will that find it fits easily into the world of independent films and their subject matter. But in the world of animation, Persepolis blazes many new trails and it shows just how provincial animated features are.

Yes, short animated films tackle many of the same themes, but the films are difficult to find and rarely reviewed. Whether we like it or not, features are the coin of the realm when it comes to film, and it's there that audiences and critics focus their attention.

Animation tends to speak metaphorically. If it has a point to make, it places it within a fantasy context. This is one of the things that's kept animation at the children's table. Only a few animated film makers working in long format have grappled with the world as it is: Ralph Bakshi and Paul Fierlinger come to mind.

What Satrapi has done with her first film is to show that animation is capable of more than Hollywood will allow. The film has shattered many tropes of conventional wisdom and proved in its festival screenings that it satisfies audiences. What she's done is to take subject matter that's commonplace in independent films and shown that animation can communicate it successfully. It's depressing that someone without a background in animation can use the medium more broadly than those who have laboured in the industry.

Perspepolis will not be the highest grossing animated film released this year. It may not win any Oscars. But Persepolis is unquestionably the most important animated film of the year in terms of its subject matter and how the subject is treated. Perspeolis suggests a way forward that animation has mostly ignored. I'm not saying that all animated films should be like this one, but what good is a medium that voluntarily avoids dealing with large portions of human experience? That's Hollywood animation in a nutshell.

Director Robert Benton (Kramer vs. Kramer, Places in the Heart, Nobody's Fool) said in a recent interview,

“I believe there are conversations filmmakers have with one another that they don’t have across the table,” said Mr. Benton. “I believe Butch Cassidy [and the Sundance Kid] is a conversation that Will Goldman was having with Bonnie and Clyde. Its a conversation that can only be done through work.”

I'm sure that Marjane Satrapi was focused on bringing her story to the screen as effectively as possible rather than challenging the animation industry. Be that as it may, she has entered the conversation. The question is, will anyone respond?

Persepolis

Persepolis is Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel about growing up during the Iranian revolution and her exile from Iran in the aftermath. It's a great book and one that is being made into an animated feature in France. (There are other clips from the film available here, here and here. Like the above trailer, the dialog is in French.)

Satrapi is involved in the creation of the feature and not only is it drawn animation in her own style, the film will be (gasp!) black and white like the original graphic novel. There couldn't be a stronger contrast between this film and the forthcoming Tin Tin films mentioned below. I can only hope that Peter Jackson and Steven Spielberg see Persepolis at the earliest possible opportunity.