Comics To Movies: Not As Easy As It Sounds
Persepolis isn’t your typical comic book movie: it doesn’t feature superheroes saving the world and is actually based on reality. The comic, based on the life of its author Marjane Satrapi, tells the story of a young girl whose family sends her to live in Paris after the Islamic Revolution in Iran. As legend goes, Satrapi wrote her graphic novel because people kept on asking her what happened and she wanted to tell her story without being constantly interrupted.
However, according to her, adapting a comic into a movie format isn’t exactly the easiest thing to do:
"When you read a comic book you know, you as a reader are very active because the movement between two frames, you have to do it yourself," Satrapi says. "When I am making a movie, the viewer is absolutely passive. They are here one and a half hours, so you have to think about everything. You cannot lean on your viewer. When you make a comic you can lean actually on the reader to make the work for you.
The movie, as well as its source material, is really excellent (a friend who returned from France brought back a bootleg DVD which we watched together); even though it doesn’t embrace the standard material of a comic-based film, it’s one I would recommend to just about anyone who enjoys reading graphic novels.
Why it's difficult to make a movie from a comic book [MPR]
Boy of Tomorrow
Posted to on 18 January 2008
Other stuff like this: adaptation, graphic novel, marjane satrapi, movie, persepolist
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