Persepolis: DVD, Blu-ray Review (2008)

Marjane Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud's Academy Award-nominated movie ushers audiences into two colliding worlds.

The first is an arresting, black-and-white world animated with the grimness of abstract noir (color is used only fleetingly here). The second is Satrapi's real-life story of growing up in Iran and Europe during the late 1970s and early 1990s, which gives life to the film's 2-D animation in ways that make for a strange yet fascinating brand of pop art.

Based on Satrapi's graphic novels, this coming-of-age story for adults follows headstrong Marjane (voice of Chiara Mastroianni) through an extended period of civil and personal unrest via the backdrop of the Islamic Revolution and the Iran-Iraq war.

To a certain degree, Marjane's cynical worldview and her dark sense of humor help her to assemble what can't rationally be assembled. But even that ability can take her only so far.

As it unfolds, "Persepolis" reveals an undercurrent of sadness that's bracing and questions about our place in the world that are humbling, none more so than the idea that sometimes your country no longer can be your home if you radically oppose its views.

Not rated. Grade: A-

View the trailer below:

And a clip: