All Rileyed Up

I saw Persepolis not too long ago, but it’s been on my mind lately with all this news footage of Iran. Persepolis is a French animated film about the life of Marjane Satrapi. She wrote Persepolis as an autobiographical graphic novel, and it was made into a film in 2007. While it is a story about a woman growing up in Iran, it’s also a coming-of-age story, about identity, how we start off learning about the identities other people assign to us and how we ultimately learn to define ourselves based on what we stand for.

(warning: spoilers ahead) What I admire so much about this movie is how subtly it depicts hard subjects like politically motivated crimes against humanity, rape, murder, and the mistreatment of women. You laugh when Marjane mouths off to the teachers at school but the laughs sort of dry up when her mother admonishes her, and you find out what they do to virgins before they execute them. It’s entertaining when Marjane bargains with street urchins selling bootleg tapes of Iron Maiden, but less so when loud music brings the police to a co-ed party and results in a guy preferring to jump from one building rooftop to another lest he get caught. Then there’s the bread swan, the quirky gift to Marjane from her beloved Uncle Anoosh, who is thrown in prison and executed.

When Marjane moves to Vienna at the behest of her parents, she sees a different way of life, one she’s not sure is even better despite its lack of the atmosphere of war. It’s a moment that really puts things into perspective, her choice to return to Iran. Of course, everyone knows you can never go back. She returns to a life that is no longer what it used to be, even if her mom is making her favorite breakfast just like she used to. Marjane ultimately leaves Iran again, leaving you reflective as the closing credits come on: does life ever have complete resolution? Or is life, ultimately, about moving on, continuing, enduring? As God points out in the movie, “Yeah, yeah, the struggle goes on.”