Even though I write about movies every day sometimes I still miss stuff – and one of the things I missed is that there will be an animated adaptation of Marjane Satrapi’s excellent memoir about growing up in Iran during the Islamic revolution, Persepolis. And I am only finding out about it because my good friend Dan Laugharn pointed me to some pictures from the cartoon!The images, which can be seen here, show that the adaptation is really keeping Satrapi’s style – which makes sense since she’s co-directing it. The film, which is scheduled for next year, is becoming more and more timely by the minute as tensions with Iran increase. It’s frustrating for me to see my fellow liberals having a knee-jerk reaction to this situation just because they don’t like Bush. Iran is really under rotten leadership, and has been so for decades. While the US had a hand in that, helping to overthrow a democratically elected government, the truth remains that Iran is a repressive, regressive state.
But even beyond that, Satrapi’s story of trying to have fun and be cool while growing up under militant Islam will probably strike a chord for everyone who ever dressed funny and got glowering stares or who ever tried to be different and became an outcast.
