the representation of memory

I enjoyed the film adaptation of Persepolis very much, and was interested to see the ways in which the images of the graphic narrative were transformed onto the moving screen. I think the fact that Satrapi was so closely involved in the project of making the film helped to preserve the authenticity of the storyline as translated into a new medium, which is often not the case when one person’s story is appropriated by another (for better or for worse). In particular, the fact that the film was animated in black and white preserved what I felt was the distinctive quality of the graphic narrative’s style.

I think one of the more interesting alterations is the fact that the film takes the form of a flashback, and scenes of Marjane in the airport are displayed in color as she recalls her past. There is a certain appealing artificiality about depicting a moment of remembering, and thus constructing the flashback, as if time were not always continuing and the past altered by the moment in which one remembers. In other words, the past is not static, but changes depending on the temporal point from which one perceives it. The fact that the narrative is told from the point of view of Marjane in exile grants the film a certain sense of poignancy and nostalgia, heightened by the fact that the film ends with the memory of her grandmother whom she will never again see.