EXILES (Tony Gatlif, 2004)

Tony Gatlif, whose Latcho Drom (1993) is one of cinema’s greatest musicals, won the directorial prize at Cannes for Exils, which is equally stunning. Gatlif, a Frenchman, is of Romany and Algerian descent. Whereas the earlier film leaned on his Romany descent, Exils leans on his Algerian descent. Whereas Latcho Drom traces the historical trek of the people we call Gypsies from India through Europe, Exils journeys in reverse, from adopted homeland to ancestral homeland. A young Parisian couple, both of Algerian descent, make their way “back” to Algeria.
     When Zano first proposes the adventure to her, Naïma laughs at the proposal; yet she will be at least as moved by their “return” to Algeria as Zano is. “I am a stranger everywhere,” she sadly notes early on in Algeria; by film’s end she may not feel quite so universally alienated.
     Every shot attests to Gatlif’s brilliance as a filmmaker. Many of these shots surprise us by relegating Zano and Naïma to background, with faces of others occupying the foreground—sometimes belonging to characters whose different journey the couple’s journey crossed by chance, sometimes belonging to strangers whom the couple will eventually pass by. In a crowded, sweltering bus, a bead of sweat from a woman who is standing becomes the facsimile of a teardrop when it falls upon Naïma’s face as she sits on the floor: a sign of stirred emotion she has largely suppressed.
     Both characters break down: Zano, whose parents are deceased, as he explores family photographs in what had been his parents’ apartment before they fled Algeria; Naïma, as the result of a rhythmic, ritualistic, orgiastic group exorcism—one of the most gripping “dance” sequences on film.
     When asked at one point to identify his religion, Zano answers with the truth: “Music.”

PERSEPOLIS (Marjane Satrapi, Vincent Paronnaud, 2007)

Its title referring to Iran’s rich history by way of an ancient Persian city, Persepolis is based on a series of autobiographical graphic novels by French immigrant Marjane Satrapi, who was a child in Iran when Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi’s reign crumbled. Tyranny begot tyranny: the Islamic Revolution, which equally opposed Marjane’s progressive family, imprisoning members afresh and executing them. Directed by Satrapi and Vincent Paronnaud, Persepolis is the coming-of-age chronicle of the young exile before she returns home prior to her leaving Iran yet again. The film covers the most difficult years of an exceedingly difficult life, including a period of homelessness in Vienna.
     The film is animated; it is possibly the most dazzling animated film ever. It is rich in human characters, not cartoon ones, and its visual basis is the woodcut rather than the comic strip. It is a graphic novel-in-motion.
     Nearly all the simulated woodcut images are in black and white, with the Iran passages largely falling into two categories: ones dramatizing the regimentation into which Islamic Iran restricted females; Marjane’s feisty rebelliousness—an extension of her spirited family, including her independent grandmother, beautifully voiced by Danielle Darrieux, Max Ophüls’s Madame de . . ., in her seventy-sixth year of film acting.
     Americans may be most gripped by the film’s reference to the Iran-Iraqi War, where the participants were pawns of the U.S., which sold arms to both sides.
     The film is somber, deeply moving—and hilarious. A mock-idyllic passage subjectively shows Marjane’s Austrian boyfriend as a beautiful sun-god; after she finds him in bed with someone else and walks out on him, he is a pimply-faced yukko.
     But perhaps most haunting is the teacher’s chalk’s crumbling fallout on the front blackboard as war breaks out outside the schoolroom window.