Persepolis   10/21/09

Wow, this was a great animated film.  And it was a full-length feature, filled with anxiety, joy, fun, sadness; the life of an Iranian girl.  The music and sounds were great.  Following in the long-ago footsteps of Dorothy on the yellow brick road, only in reverse, the majority of the film is in black and white, and we end with the color scene in the airport.  All of the scenes in the airport, in fact, are in the present and done in color.  They are a well-done pivot point for the bulk of the story.  The animation never lets up with the different creative angles, the darks/lights, movement and layers.  Reviewing the film now by memory, it did not feel flat at all, as some black and white animated films have seemed.  The humor will floor you at times.  The comedic timing was perfect, exemplifying the meaning of "comedy relief".  If it were not for the judicially dispersed comic moments the remainder would have been drear.  Very wise.  This scores a big hit for animation.

The politics: I will need to think them over, as I'm sure the director intended.  Everyone loves to hate the West right now.  It's popular to attribute the world's ills to the Western world and to attach blame to the big gorilla on the block as contributing directly to the hatred in the rest of the world.  I'm just not so sure that's accurate.  After all, you can give a person a gun, but that doesn't mean they have to shoot.  I'll come back to this.