- Feelings from Watching the Film "I grew up in Iran"
Last year, I stood alone in the "Boku Book City" and read a set of four comic books, which is the Iranian female illustrator Ma Jia ·Satabie's "I grew up in Iran", published by Sanlian Bookstore, made me cry. The four books are named after The Veil, The Sabbath, The Exile in Austria and Homecoming. This year, Shatabie made this book into a film as a director. I heard that it was also shortlisted for the main competition unit of the 60th Cannes Film Festival in 2007, and finally won the Jury Award alongside the Mexican film "Silent Sunshine", but this time At the Oscars, it was "fallen out".
In fact, I have already collected the film, so I suddenly got interested last night and took it out to watch. The artistic style of the film is very strong. Like the original version, there are comedy and tragic places, but it is generally "harder". When reading the book, the clues are very clear, because the author framed his growth process with subtitles, and saw his standing and thinking in a small family and a big country from each small story. There is an old saying: be prepared for danger in times of peace, but this comic book with a strong autobiographical sense made me feel the insecurity in the turbulent times. This insecurity is due to the feelings for the motherland, and on the one hand, it is also due to the restlessness of individual youth - she She has her own views on the government's restrictions on women's dress and behavior in public, and her boldness makes her personality unrepressed. Although the strength of individual resistance is so small, her "extraordinary" really makes me feel the unique charm of personality. Judging from the part about nursing my grandmother at the end, this little detail she reiterated made me see how pitiful the fate of women in Iran is... This is also different from the original, and the film may have added more feminist intentions In it, and the comics, tightly tie the fate of the individual to that of the nation.
In the movie, the story begins at the station. The grown-up Marjana is detained at the station because of her passport problem, and she is caught in the memory while smoking a cigarette. So the picture was also switched from color to black and white. Shatabie's skill lies in the skillful use of black and white illustration skills. Black and white are not pure, there is a blend of light and shadow, and there is a gritty color rendering, which expresses the characters. Or in cutscenes, she usually uses silhouettes to highlight the gloomy and terrifying political atmosphere with an absolutely artistic expression. At the same time, the lines in oriental art are also used very freely. Like the part that expresses the experience of my father and friend, the places with waves are all displayed with collage and decorative patterns, and the little story about the king uses "shadow puppets" "The same technique, so it has the characteristics of oriental art. It can be said that this film is by no means a cartoon in the pure sense made for children, but a self-exile and struggle of female consciousness under political repression. We have a sense of participation - emotions are common in the world, and although we can't experience a fate like Maja Satabie's, we can get so close to her emotional fate. When she was living on the streets of Austria, when love slapped her in the face, she slept in the street and was rescued from pneumonia. She called home and her mother said, "Come back, don't say anything about your Things!" She was tolerated and sheltered in the arms of her home, but the home she loved was in the midst of the country's dire fate...
The country imposed a curfew, prohibiting men and women from partying at night, while Margaret, who loves rock and American culture Jana and her friends secretly held their own party, and eventually someone climbed the wall and fell to her death. The tragic phenomenon that was restrained made her contradictory and silent... Why did she say she was unsubmissive, she went abroad because of her She blatantly contradicted the school's religious teacher, and then she returned to China and felt the inequality of women's status. At the end, she left the country again, and her eyes were wet with helpless tears...
There are many less "jokes" and plots in the movie, such as cohabitation with gay men, drug use, etc. are not presented, and many indirect accusations of war have also been "cut", I don't know if the author deliberately For what reason, the narrative of the whole story is fast-paced, and many of the emotional renderings are not as powerful as comic books. At least the books are turned slowly and can infiltrate their own thoughts, but the movie does not allow it. Although the author and director has been very selective in telling the story, the film was banned in Iran after its release, and it was called "a film that does not truly describe the great achievements of the Islamic revolution", also because of the government's Opposes, and was banned at the Bangkok Film Festival in Thailand on the grounds that it affected the friendship between the two countries.
However, the author Shatabi said of his country: "People talk about this great ancient civilization and always associate it with fundamentalism, fanaticism and terrorism. We are an Iranian who grew up in Iran. , knowing that this image is far from real. That's why it was so important to me to create "I grew up in Iran". I don't think an entire country should be judged on the bad behavior of a few extremists. Nor do I want people to forget those Iranians who lost their lives in prison defending their freedom, died in the Iran-Iraq war, suffered under various tyranny regimes, or were forced to leave their loved ones and their homeland.”
I also read the card. In Led Hosseini's "The Kite Runner" and Lahiri's "The Same Name", the fate of the characters in the book is actually the author's own destiny. In the days when they left their homes, they still care about the country or obey the dignity of the country, Living neither humble nor arrogant, I think, the reason why Shatabie wants to show her destiny is to tell the world that Iranians are not the narrow image that everyone has one-sided understanding. At least before her, I knew a documentary filmmaker, Abbas Kiarostami, who knew the life of the Iranians, the simplicity and so on, and now Iran stands in my heart again as a woman, and I think, for For the whole world, this film is shocking.
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