Persepolis (2007) - Satrapi's sensationally good and very personal animation

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A couple of memorable scenes from the film are teased amid a clutter of honors and names involved on this overly packed poster for Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Persepolis

Marjane Satrapi grows up with her family in Iran and experiences the Iranian revolution of 1979, goes through childhood, youth, war, a surreal time in Vienna, homecoming and finally adult exile in France.

 

Persepolis is written and directed by great debuting French filmmaker Vincent Paronnaud (Raging Blues (2004, short)) and great debuting Iranian-born French filmmaker Marjane Satrapi (Radioactive (2019)), based on her autobiographical graphic novels Persepolis (2003) and Persepolis 2 (2004). The title is the ancient Greek name for the capital of Persia, today's Iran.

The film is extremely enlightening about the rough times in the horribly repressive Islamic regime in Iran, - something that regrettably hasn't changed dramatically in later decades. With simple, poignant mostly black and white animation and strong voice performances we are led sensitively through Satrapi's coming of age: Infatuations, deaths, music, depression and illness are all natural important elements of the easily relatable journey.

Persepolis is surprisingly funny, - really, really funny! - and it is a vital, very vivid and honest depiction of conservative state Islamism. It ends a bit suddenly, and I'd have enjoyed another 15 minutes about her later life in France, and perhaps about where Iran and the Iranians have come to since.

 

Watch a trailer for the film here

Cost: 6 mil. €, approximately 7.3 mil. $

Box office: 22.7 mil. $

= Box office success (returned 3.10 times its cost)

[Persepolis premiered 23 May (Cannes Film Festival, main competition) and runs 96 minutes. 14 companies and support bodies collaborated in the financing and production of the film. It opened #46 to a 37k $ first weekend in 7 theaters in North America, where it peaked at #26 and in 536 theaters (different weeks), grossing 4.4 mil. $ (19.4 % of the total gross). North America was its 2nd biggest market. France was the biggest with 9.4 mil. $ (41.4 %), and UK was the 3rd biggest with 1.8 mil. $ (7.9 %). A government-connected Iranian group protested the film to the Cannes Film Festival, and the Iranian ambassador to Thailand successfully had the film cancelled at the Bangkok International Film Festival. The film was selected as France's Oscar bid of the year and was nominated in the Best Animated Feature category, lost to Ratatouille. It was also nominated for 2 BAFTAs, a Golden Globe, won 2/6 César award nominations, a National Board of Review award, the Jury Prize at Cannes, (the Palme d'Or was lost to 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days) and was nominated for a European Film award, among other honors. Roger Ebert gave it a 4/4 star review, translating to a notch over this one. Paronnaud returned with Villemolle 81 (2009); Satrapi with Chicken with Plums/Poulet aux Prunes (2011), co-directed with Paronnaud. Persepolis is certified fresh at 96 % with an 8.20/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Persepolis?

Holy Spider (2022) - Blood on the hands of Iran's Islamic system and its leaders

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A woman with pronounced makeup lures from the inside of a Persian-style carpet on this poster for Ali Abbasi's Holy Spider

An Islamic fundamentalist serial killer is at large in the Iranian city Marshhad in 2000-01, and a female journalist travels there to investigate the matter and probe the police's lack of progress in the case.

 

Holy Spider is written by Afshin Kamran Bahrami, 'story supervisor' Jonas Wagner and great Iranian-Danish filmmaker, co-writer/co-producer/director Ali Abbasi (Shelley (2016)). It is based on the actual case of Saeed Hanaei, who killed 16 prostitutes in Marshhad.

It is a horrific watch and may well make you feel physically unwell at its conclusion, as it should be, but it is also an illuminating, captivating, important and angry film, a film incensed at the misogynistic constraints of repression, abuse and ongoing blood sacrifice that is the shadow side of Iran's Islamist regime, still very much jarring and painful to observe today, as scores of people, including teenagers, are murdered by the state to uphold a fundamentalist system of Islamic repression where women are second-grade citizens and culture and freedom of expression are largely banned.

Not often do we come to ponder the cruel, dangerous and unpleasant life as a street prostitute in a country such as Iran, but in this very well-produced film we do. Martin Dirkov's (Enforcement/Shorta (2020)) sparse, eerie score heightens the feeling of urban dissolution and palpable danger.

The film is no traditional thriller, no whodunit, no procedural, and also not a film that wallows in gory excesses. It also doesn't shrink away from the horrific acts of murder and the chilling disposal of the bodies. Mehdi Bajestani (Whisper (2018, TV-series)) is incredibly convincing as the religious nut murderer. The context of Iran however seems to remove some of the guilt from the man's shoulders: Of course there is a prostitute slayer in Iran, one comes to think, and I'm sure there have been others since him also. In a country so centered on eradication of anything impure to Islamic standards, it isn't really all that strange as an occurrence. 

The same line of thought haunts the protagonist, the female journalist sublimely portrayed by Zar Amir-Ebrahimi (Morgen Sind Wir Frei (2019)) as a very brave, intelligent and yet inevitably victimized individual, who tries to fight the overwhelmingly patriarchal, male chauvinist  system. Forouzan Jamshidnejad (Mitra (2021)) is powerful as Saeed's wife, and Mesbah Taleb is heart-breaking as their oldest child, 14 year-old Ali, who is pushed towards embracing and embellishing his father's murders by the people around him. 

This spider's web is only half-way spun by the homicidal spider himself. The other part is constructed by the society around him. In the words of Abbasi, it is described as Iran's serial killer society.

That regrettably still stands. And Holy Spider is a very powerful call out for its downfall.

 

Related post:

 

Ali Abbasi: Border/Gräns (2018) - The second Lindqvist adaptation is another wtf-experience with muddled implications if any 

Watch a trailer for the film here

 

Cost: Estimated 2.5 mil. $

Box office: 1.37 mil. $

= Huge flop

[Holy Spider premiered 22 May (Cannes Film Festival, main competition) and runs 117 minutes. 21 companies and support bodies collaborated in the financing and production of the film. The shooting was impossible in Iran and also, it turned out, in Turkey. Shooting eventually took place from May-June 2021 in Jordan. The film has so far only 2 recorded markets at Box Office Mojo: France with 635k $ and Hungary with 2k $. The film has furthermore so far sold 23k tickets in Denmark, coming to around 360k $. The film has primarily screened at film festivals so far, but is set to release in Netherlands, Canada, Turkey, Germany and Sweden in coming months. It has already been chosen as Denmark's entry to the 2023 Oscars. The film won the Best Actress award at Cannes. Iran's regime has indirectly threatened the filmmakers and cast by calling the film 'insulting' and comparing it the Salman Rushdie's novel The Satanic Verses (1988). Abbasi returns with The Last of Us (2023, TV-series) and does not have his theatrical return announced yet. Bajestani does not have his next gig announced yet; Amir-Ebrahumi returned in Les Survivants (2022). Holy Spider is fresh at 86 % with a 7.50/10 critical average at Rotten Tomatoes.]

What do you think of Holy Spider?

A Separation (2011)/جدایی نادر از سیمین - Farhadi puts Iran on the cinematic world map with a supreme drama

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1 Time Film Excess Nominee:


Best Screenplay: Asghar Farhadi (lost to Rory Stewart Kinnear, Lynne Ramsay for We Need to Talk About Kevin)

+ Best Iranian Movie of the Year

One tender and beautiful poster for Asghar Farhadi's A Separation

Nader and Simin are a normal middle class couple in Teheran, Iran, who are getting divorced. But more than the divorce, the film is about the problems that follow the man, Nader, when his maid loses her child because of his letting her go.

A Separation is a minute and very sharply written drama with a high level of suspense from great Iranian writer-director Asghar Farhadi (About Elly (2009)). The original Farsi title, pronounced Odaí-e Nadér az Simín, means The Separation of Nader and Simin.
The film is masterly structured and acted by Peyman Moaadi (Camp X-Ray (2014)) and Leila Hatami (What's the Time in Your World? (2014)) in the lead parts as well as the supporting actors, made with considerable difficulty in the totalitarian, Islamic dictatorship. It is a moving partly social-realistic, partly law-centered drama about some highly recognizable issues. It is moving, (although nearly all the characters are insufferable to some degree.) - A bit of humor wouldn't have been out of the way, if you ask me, though.
But A Separation is still a very sad and very good film.

Related posts:
 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED III] 
2011 in films and TV-series - according to Film Excess [UPDATED II]
2011 in films - according to Film Excess
 

Watch the trailer for the film here

Cost: 0.5 mil. $
Box office: 22.9 mil. $
= Mega-hit
[A Separation was not only the best reviewed film of 2011 (according to Metacritic's 95 score, based on 41 reviews), and Roger Ebert's favorite film of 2011, Farhadi was also Oscar-nominated for his script (the first non-English script nominated in 5 years), and the film won the Best Foreign Film Oscar as well as key awards in Berlin and tons of other awards and yearly top 10 lists. The film enjoyed a surprisingly strong audience response as well. It was especially big in the US (7 mil. $/31 % of the total gross) and in France (6.1 mil. $/27 %).]

What do you think of A Separation?

Argo (2012) or, The Hollywood Hero

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Ben Affleck's giant head with a red strip of film over it on the poster for Ben Affleck's Argo

QUICK REVIEW:

6 Americans are secret house guests by necessity at the Canadian embassy in 1979 in Tehran, Iran. From home, a daring rescue mission is being constructed around a fake science fiction-film to be shot partially in Iran.
Ben Affleck's (The Town (2010)) triumph Argo is an impeccable suspense movie with political ties a' la The China Syndrome (1979) with a wonderful, comedic Hollywood-angle in Alan Arkin (Little Miss Sunshine (2006)) and John Goodman's (Monsters, Inc. (2001)) great parts, - and many other fine actors.

John Goodman and Alan Arkin in Ben Affleck's Argo

Irreproachable production; the script by Chris Terrio (Batman vs. Superman (2016)) amuses in the last act, as various suspense-building obstacles are placed in front of the escaping group of Americans in hostile land.

 

The escape group of Ben Affleck's Argo face yet another obstacle

Argo is an excellent, historical thriller, which won three Oscars for Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Editing.
Affleck seems to be leaving directing again now for the (next long) time being, since he has been cast as the next Batman (in Batman vs. Superman (2016) and later in Justice League), - the kind of multi-million dollar leotard-wearing job that easily rips out years and years from a poor man's life.

Watch the great trailer for Argo here

Budget: 44.5 mil. $
Box office: 232.3 mil. $
= Big hit

What do you think of Argo and Affleck's other achievements?
How would you describe going from making Argo to playing Batman?