The big argument with all the books that have turned into films or the reverse is the similarities and differences between them. On most films, they say based off the book, so they do not have to exactly copy word for words what the book says. In this case with the graphic novel Persepolis the film sticks to the novel’s storyline. There are some minor differences in detail though.
Marjane Satrapi’s autobiographical graphic novel shows the events in history that she went through, with her own experience to show is how the Iranian war and Revolution impacted her. The graphic novel uses black and white characters to allow the reader to imagine more and decide for themselves what it could have looked like, but in the movie the first and last scene are in color.
The film stays true to the storyline of the book. It has the same graphic feel since the book was a graphic novel. One of the first differences you will notice is when the book opens it starts off chapter one with Marji at ten years old wearing a veil and the movie opens up with her in an airport she looks for the flight Tehran and when she sits down she then starts reminiscing on her childhood.
The chapters within the book are just small bits and pieces of hand-picked events of Marji’s life. The film just makes the chapters into flow into a story instead of having only bits of it. Another difference is that the book follows around Marji’s life but the film shows Iran’s history so it is missing a lot of the scenes where Marji is in Austria, and in the movie it only shows you a small peek of her traveling through Eroupe. The next is that there is a big part of that where Marji is living with a bunch of homosexuals and her mother comes by. In the book Marji’s state of mind was affected by this and it is never talked about in the movie.
Looking back to the film and the novel, discovering that there have been two chapters that were thrown out and did not appear in the movie at all. The two that were not in the movie were, The Letter and The Jewels. In the chapter ‘the Jewels’ there is a confrontation between Mali and Mrs. Satrapi as well as other women in a grocery store; in the store Mali feels she’d rather lose to the Iraqis instead of having her own kind insult her. In chapter ‘The Letter’ Marji’s dad, Satrapi, is not for the relationship between his maid and his neighbor. He explains that he does not like it because the love that they have should not be happening because of the differences in social class. In my opinion these two chapters should have been included in the movie because the chapters play a crucial role in the themes in the book. For example when her father is not happy with the relationship between his neighbor and his maid shoes the theme about social class.
Death is something the character Momo is obsessed with in the novel. Momo is a friend of Marji's while she is in school in Vienna, also Marji’s “first kiss.” There's a scene in the film where Marji is with Momo at a heavy metal rock concert and starts dancing with the audience. The scene shows that Marji is removing herself from the Iranian society, and this argument is further compounded by the fact that she appears to be in the bar from France.