The political is nothing without the personal, and there's likely no finer recent artistic proof of this than Persepolis, the amazing animated film adaptation of the autobiographical graphic novel series by Iranian expatriate Marjane Satrapi. For those not yet familiar with her story, Satrapi was fated to witness her own coming of age as a native Iranian intersecting with the Iranian Revolution, and the conditions of her journey from child to adult were profoundly overshadowed--often very darkly indeed--by the reign of Islamic fundamentalism. Persepolis, in both book and film form, is Satrapi's magnificent manner of dealing with such a dreadful manifestation of one's own youth. Rather than writing a mere cloying confession, she has combined catharsis and artistic triumph by melding her Bildungsroman with her roman a clef, in graphic novel and now film form.

For the core and hungry audience of a blatantly political newspaper such as the one you're now reading, Persepolis will be deeply nourishing, as revelations about US complicity in the rise and rule of Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and the tragic Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 provide a core ingredient in the story's spellbinding mix. But fear not the moonbats here: Satrapi's genius lies in how she has seamlessly intertwined, among other autobiographical elements, her poignant path of bad cases of unrequited young love with her political awakening in the long shadow of an alleged revolution gone terribly, terribly wrong. Truly subversive, and truly heartbreaking, the closest Persepolis comes to a happy ending is the fact that its protagonist survives bad revolution, genetically modified war, teenage heartbreak, and European bohemia, if only to return to a broken homeland which may yet see even more tragic times, once again engineered from afar, somewhere on the Potomac River. But fear not the bleakness here: Persepolis is leavened with flashes of wicked humor that add cathartic spice to an already complex cinematic dish.

As you read this, Persepolis may not be long for local theatres, but given its critical success, its release on DVD is surely imminent. You know what to do.