Persepolis Review- Draft

When the movie Persepolis began to play in class on Wednesday I was surprised to see that it was basically in comic book format. I thought that it was going to be a movie with real actors in a real setting. The reason I thought that was because that is how other comic book movies are made so I just assumed this would be the same way. Realizing that it was filmed like a comic book I thought that the movie was going to be stupid because I was thinking we just read this, and now we are watching it on screen, what a waste of time. However, as the movie progressed I began to like how it was filmed.
Since the movie was basically the book on screen, it actually made more sense to make the film this way because it did not take a lot away from the book. Even though they could not fit every little detail into the move they were able to get all of the major points across. There still were some problems that took away from the book while watching the movie. For example, in the book there were a lot of things going on at once in some points. Like the grandmother and Marjane would be talking, and then the mom and dad would be talking at the same time. While reading I actually had time to look at every “bubble” to understand what everyone was saying. However, in the movie I could not grasp what everyone was saying because it was going so fast, I did not have time to think about anything; the movie just kept going. Another thing was the transition from one scene of her life to the next was hard to understand where they were going. In comparison to the book, there was a title for each time Marjane was going to tell another story so you had time to contemplate what just happened previously, and move on to the next message she was trying to give. In the movie, it jumped around from scene to scene so fast that I was confused as to what was actually going on. While I was watching the movie I was thinking, wait did this happen first in the book or are they just trying to speed the movie up?
I was really excited when we got to watch the second part of the film because we had only read the first part. I actually had no idea that there was a second part after she moved to France when she was younger. I was surprised that she actually went back with her parents eventually because I just figured that they were going to die, and she would live in France for the rest of her life miserable. Even though I did not read the second half of the book, I think that it did a great job at getting across what happened in the next chapter of her life. Back to the way it was filmed, in the book I laughed at some points because Marjane was an interesting character, so when things happened in the movie that happened in the book I still found them funny. So even if I never read the book, I still think that they did a wonderful job at conveying Marjane’s experience through the Islamic Revolution. I normally do not like comic books, or movies that are based off of books, but I found Persepolis enjoyable and easy to understand.