REGULAR CONTENT
MOVIES REVIEWS
Utopia (2013) Directed by: John Pilger Cast (as themselves): Jon Charles Altman, Bob Randall, Lorna Fejo Utopia heavily emphasizes on a deeply dysfunctional relationship between the Indigenous Australian community and white Australians. We are prepared to learn an awful truth about indigenous communities: they live on mineral-rich lands that cause mouths to water in mining corporation boardrooms. Yet we still see their desperate poor conditions, and can expect more insidious harassment. Their voices and rights are continued to be ignored. Pilger’s film argues that the history of abuse and bullying, so far from being a closed chapter, is merely a prelude: it is about to become worse than before. (SA)
Persepolis (2007) Directed by: Marjane Satrapi & Vincent Paronnaud Cast: Chiara Mastroianni, Catherine Deneuve The movie focuses on Marjane, a little girl growing up in pre-revolutionary Iran in the 1970s. She is described as a superb character, smart, and vulnerable, with a profound love of Western culture. Hers is a funny and deeply involving story but its sharp stabs against the women-hatred of the Iranian governing classes are enough to trigger rage. Later Marjane will be sent abroad for a chaotic education in Europe, where she experiences the finest condescension and misogyny that the West has to offer. In spite of herself, Marjane finds a gravitational pull to a homeland that rejects free-thinking women: a complicated, bittersweet sense of exile which Satrapi has cultivated in this entertaining movie. It’s safe to say that “Persepolis” is a living proof of imagination’s resistance to the literal-minded and the power-mad, who insist that the world can be seen only in black and white. (SA)
28 / WH