The Veil

[eumelia]

Wait a mo?!
There's an economy crisis?!
Because nobody saw this one coming.
And hey! Who cares if it's pensions and saving bonds and taxes that bail out Wall Street.
Surely that big invisible hand will fix everything.

Hear me *gag*

In any event I didn't actually want to write about the economy. I'll leave that to those who know much more and better than me on these matters.

Yesterday I spent the day with tamara_russo and had a great time doing so. I got to Tel-Aviv approx. two hours after we were supposed to meet, because who the fuck knew that Friday had such great big traffic going into that city and that the bus I took wouldn't go where it was supposed.
But I digress.
We saw Persepolis, which finally made it to Israel... 'cause you know, a movie directed, written and produced by an Iranian is considered enemy propaganda - that really is the only reason I can think of that would make a movie of this kind take a year and a half to find a distributer here.
Edited To Add (30/09/2008) - It came late basically because it's an unpopular genre.
Animation is unpopular? *shrug*

I'm a big fan of Marjane Satrapi and had been looking forward to the movie.
I was not disappointed.
Though it was a difficult movie for me to watch... it is not as graphic (in the violence sense) as the books and in addition when you reach a climax in a book you can put it aside and let the story digest.
The movie really pulls no emotional punches and I spent the majority of it quite teary - I didn't know it would be so disturbing... the reason I didn't go see Waltz with Bashir because I knew it would be disturbing for me.
So a portion of the movie was spent with my face buried in Tami's shoulder... which she graciously didn't mind.

It's an important movie, because it's not just the story of Iran as perceived through the eyes of a young girl.

It's a great criticism of the world in which Satrapi grew up and lived. Both have their advantages and disadvantages. Both have their prejudices and biases, but one is not superior to the other (except for the tyranny... which Satrapi manages to break down and show that it isn't about who is in Power... but about Power as a corruptive agency and the influence that other have on countries).

It's interesting that today I came across an essay by Naomi Wolf (she of "The Beauty Myth") about her perspective of women's sexuality in Middle-Eastern and Muslim countries, which you should read and maybe groan as she speaks with pretension because she's an American in an Muslim nation... but it's good none the less, specifically for that perspective.
Veiled Sexuality by Naomi Wolf