t weekend?!As promised, this blog dissects Persepolis, The Counterfeiters, and Welcome to the Sticks. First up is Persepolis, an animated feature in French based on the autobiographical graphic novels of Marjane Satrapi. It is set both in Teheran, pre-and post-revolution, and in Europe. We see Marjane as an irrepressible child, declaring to her radical parents that she loves the Shah, only to be told by her uncle about his imprisonment under the regime. Awakened, she comes to support the Shah's overthrow. However, all is not happily ever after, as the new Islamist regime also imprisons and executes its citizens, and curtails many of the freedoms Marjane had previously taken for granted. Fearing for her safety, after an outburst at school, her parents send her away to Vienna. Here she can more freely participate in the less-regimented society she has longed for, but becomes depressed and disillusioned after having her heartbroken. After some time on the streets, she returns to Teheran. After mooching around there for a while, Marjane is admonished by her grandmother for not being true to herself, and reluctantly leaves again, this time for France. The film was by turns funny and moving - I particularly liked the conversations between God and Karl Marx - but seemed somewhat unsure about what message it was trying to send. On the one hand, it's a 2-D rendering of someone bearing witness to their own life and experiences inside and outside of Iran. It presented a mostly coherent opposition to the regime of the Shah and the mullahs, but didn't offer much as an alternative apart from unwilling exile and alienation. On the other hand, it's also reproducing some well-worn narratives: the rebellion of the strong-willed girl and the alienation of the outsider, for example. The film is framed by a very morose older Marjane waiting at Orly airport in Paris, ostensibly for a flight to Teheran. While she waits, she recalls her life there. A little confusingly at the end, we see the younger Marjane first arriving at the same airport in Paris, just as the older Marjane gets in a taxi and leaves, unable to board the plane and go back to Iran. Perhaps aptly, no easy answers are offered as the credits abruptly roll shortly afterwards.
Next up was The Counterfeiters, which won the Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film this year. This movie is based on historical events, in which a group of prisoners are put to work in the last days of the war by the Nazis to make counterfeit money - specifically, pounds and dollars - in an attempt to sabotage the Allied economies. The protagonist of the film is a criminal forger who heads up the counterfeiting operation. However, he is faced with opposition from another of the group - Adolf Burger, on whose memoirs the film is based - who refuses to print the dollars once the block has been perfected. This eventuates into a stand-off as the camp commandant threatens to shoot some of the prisoners unless the dollars are produced. Weirdly, the film this most reminded me of was not Downfall or The Lives of Others, with which it has been compared, but Enigma, the film about the Bletchley Park code-breakers. Why? Because, despite the concentration camp setting, it also had a similar sense of adventure about it - will they produce the dollar / will they crack the code? Both cases also posed a moral dilemma: in order to undermine the counterfeiting operation, Burger risks the lives of his fellow prisoners; in order to protect their work on the Enigma code, the code-breakers have to choose to sacrifice convoys. I felt there was something a little troubling about this comparison. It also got me thinking about the narratives that German filmmakers are choosing to make about WW2. Though powerful, they are often either about the end of the war (Downfall, The Counterfeiters) or about exceptional figures. I was particularly struck by a scene close to the beginning of the movie set in pre-war Berlin. The forger was at a wild bar and encountered a fellow debauchee who was sporting a Nazi badge. When asked why he was wearing it, he was dismissive, acting as if it was just a fad. This put me in mind of some of the passages in Christopher Isherwood's novel, Goodbye to Berlin. The difference is that the novel was written before the war. This movie wasn't. I wonder if there is still no narrative able to be made in Germany about the period in-between the pre-war slightly lugubrious thuggery to the regime's post-war demise.
For a change of pace after these two relatively intense films, I went to see Welcome to the Sticks on Monday morning on my day off. Apparently, this 'fish out of water' comedy has been the most successful French film ever (or something like that). I can see why. It is mostly good-natured, not too taxing and gently sending-up stereotypes of the people of the region of Nord-Pas-de-Calais, specifically those who speak Picard or Ch-ti. A postal worker from Provence is sent to this apparent hell-hole - 'the sticks' of the title - as a punishment for his decidedly un-PC attempts to get a transfer to a sea-side job. After a bit of a false-start, he warms to the place. His wife, who has remained in Provence, is convinced that he is suffering. Although previously on the point of leaving him, she grows closer to him in support. So supportive is she, in fact, that she decides to move up to the North in order to share the load. Cue extremely elaborate subterfuge on the part of Phillipe's new friends to convince her that the town really is as awful as he's made out. Miners, broken-down terraces and lairy behaviour ensue (why, it was just like Wales! Just kidding). Naturellement, Phillipe and co get busted, his wife storms off, but nothing very major really happens and everyone lives happily ever after - well, until Phillipe is transferred away from the North at the end.What's next for our intrepid film-goers? More mixtures of froth and intensity: Hunger, I Just Didn't Do It, Mongol and Let the Right One In.
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