Marjane Satrapi's is not a soft face. The Iranian comic author, film director and painter has extreme features: thin lips and wide smile, messy eyebrows that always seem to be in a position of surprise, cheekbones that stand out even without laughing. Her eyes are always wide open and his hair, very black, does not grow still. In spite of having lived only in big cities -Tehran, Austria, France-, she carries a wild trail on her face. This trail has been reproduced: it is captured in almost every page of Persepolis, her most famous comic book, and also in the film of the same name.
Just as she uses her appearance, Satrapi has drawn on her history and the history of the women she grew up with - her mother, her grandmothers - to construct her artistic universe: a mirror of reality where women pursue independence, where small and great revolutionaries are admired, where life is always just about to be lost. He has also expanded her impulse as an artist to study women she admires for their strength, such as Marie Curie, who was the main character in her latest film.
It is freedom and no other theme that she is awarded, perhaps because she knows what it is like to live under dictatorship, not being able to return to the places that sound like home, spending days in confinement. Having a daily life with restrictions, she says, the question of independence and emancipated thought takes on an enormous meaning and is asked many times more: with each movement.
Freedom appears as the greatest banner in your work, who taught you that this should be the struggle and the path?
My mother. She was not independent, because it was my dad who brought money to the house, but one of the first phrases I remember learning, when I was a very little girl, was: “your own hand must be in your own pocket”. What she meant to tell me was that a woman's independence has its first moment in economic freedom. If a man gives you your money you are not free, simple as that. I also remember that she taught me to be free by convincing me that I was a human being like any other, so if a human being could study, live the way one wanted and make one's own rights, I could do the same.
What actions accompany, for you, this certainty of freedom?
The first thing is not to care what people think of you. We are social animals, so we are not born with this ability, but I ask myself: do I like all the people, do I like them, do I like what they all do, well no, then mathematically it is impossible that everybody likes them or that they like my books or my movies or me. That thought sets me free.
For women it gets complicated, doesn't it?
Sure, for women it's worse. I recently made a film about Marie Curie and I heard a lot of comments like “she was very temperamental”, “she was not nice at all”. And my response was: but she's a genius. How come brilliant men can behave like bastards and it's okay but women, no matter what they do, should be gentle and kind? She was amazing, she focused on what she wanted, which was to do physics and chemistry, and not on being liked. Women, then, to be free must carry the weight of the stereotype of gentleness and the “role in society” that has been imposed on us and tear it down.
I give a very simple example: I do not have children and when I am asked why -almost always women- I answer that it is because I want to dedicate my life and my time to my art. I always come off as ambitious, but if a man answers the same, he is an artist.
You also have the stereotype that comes intrinsically from having a past like yours, from being Iranian?
Of course, people come to me thinking that I am very conservative, that I am anti-abortion, that gays bother me or that I am very serious or very decent and that I never say rude things because I am an oriental woman. But I always disappoint because I don't behave, I'm not decent. However it's something that doesn't keep me awake at night, because if I fight with every human being who lives by stereotypes, I would need 5 lives to finish them all. At some point in my life, I decided that I would just let them talk.
Why did you decide to make Radioactivity, the film about Marie Curie?
I admire her. At the end of the 19th century she decided not to become a professor of mathematics, which was what society told her she could aspire to, but she left her country, went to France and managed to become a scientist. She doesn't make excuses, she doesn't complain, she just does it. I really like that kind of passion. Also she didn't do it with feminist or suffragette labels, nothing, she was just a huge woman. I must say that I like feminism but the one of actions, the one of those women who don't say much but do, and Curie was like that. What they say that words become thought and thought becomes action, I don't believe it, I believe in experience, in facts.
And how did you decide that it was her strength, her discovery and the impact of the discovery that you wanted to tell?
I saw other films of Marie Curie and she always appears as Pierre's muse, as a docile, soft woman. But I read her correspondence and her diary and that didn't correspond. So I wanted to be faithful to her spirit and talk about what was most significant for her, which was her discovery. This, of course, accompanied by her intimate story, because I also wanted what was before and after mathematics, before and after science.
Do you admire many other women?
I don't admire many people, but yes, I take a lot of example from them. Admiration has some blindness in it, so I don't like it. I try to learn from what they do. I like, for example, women who behave a little bit badly, who do things they are not supposed to do or people who tell me what they shouldn't, those are my heroes of the day to day.
Does anything tie you down today?
There is always something that binds you. You love people so you have to compromise. I would be lying if I said I had no strings attached; because the problem with freedom is that eventually the price you have to pay is loneliness and I ask myself: do I want to be alone all my life? I don't think so. I try not to tie myself down too much, but I don't want to be alone.
In many interviews you have said that if you go back to Iran you would not be free anymore, why is that?
I've been told that I shouldn't go back because then I wouldn't be able to leave because they would put me in prison. For everything I do, for everything, I ask myself two questions: would this kill me? Would this put me in jail? If the answer is no, then I do it. For me being dead or locked up is the worst thing that can happen to me. As it is, I probably won't come back.
Is the use of multiple narratives and formats, moving from comics to film and then to painting, important to you?
For me it's different ways of expressing myself, which is really what I'm looking for. First I did comics because it made me very happy but it's very lonely and I was missing the surprise effect, I can't open my own book and have an unexpected feeling. Then I made a film and I was no longer alone because there you work with many people and everyone brings their own imagination and their own interpretation of what they were taught; also I always had the surprise effect because everyone does their part and the result is always something different from what you conceived. The latter can be thought of as unfortunate but it almost never is, especially since I don't like to control things, I like to surprise myself in life.
In any aspect?
No, with a lot of control you feel safe and I guess for many that's fine, but when you lose a little bit of control there is some danger and I like that.
Do you identify where that need to express yourself independent of the format comes from?
I have that urge, maybe because I think I'm super interesting and I have something so important to say that people should read my books or watch my films (laughs). Maybe there's a lot of narcissism there. I really hate when other artists tell me things like “I write my books for me”. I don't believe you, you write them to get published and to get an audience. Even when you write a journal, you always do it thinking that someday they're going to discover it and they're going to see how wonderful and sensitive you were. Anyway, I think we write or draw or make films because we think we have something important to say.
Is making your paintings a solitary space like comics?
Painting comes as a valley after making films, I do it to be alone and balance myself. It relaxes me because I don't have to think about budgets, or money and I go at a pace that I can define for myself. It's also a place where I don't have to be so worried about it being understood, which happens with comics and cinema; painting is just space, so I don't ask myself that question, I'm not interested in it being understood; it's very instinctive or visceral, I hope, both for me and for whoever finally has my paintings. For me painting is a clean transit between my brain, my hand and the canvas.
Do you prefer making comics, cinema or painting, could you choose one?
Cinema. Because it's the most difficult and stressful. I like working like that. Also because I learn more making films.
What differences do you draw from having made Persepolis in comics and then in film?
The relationship between the author and the comic is very active; you have to know what's going to happen and just as you think, it happens. The relationship with cinema is passive, your thought is active but the result doesn't depend on that thought. When they proposed me to make the film I didn't know whether to do it or not, because I spent four years thinking about that story in one form (the comic), why think about it in another (the cinema)? But at the same time a voice was telling me that they were going to pay me to learn a new job, worst case scenario I would make a bad movie and it's not that bad, so I did it.
Do you feel a difference when you work only with black and white, as in comics, to when you work with color, as in your paintings?
When I do comics I consider that the drawing is the writing, so when I draw a room, I'm really writing it and it must be descriptive and precise, the black and white helps me to simplify. On the other hand, when I paint, I just let myself be carried away by the sensations, I don't make an intellectual effort and there I'm freer, then the colors come.
Do you have a recognizable work method?
My method is always a lot of work. To be concentrated. I don't like laziness.
You once said in an interview that you would like to make a film about Latin America, why?
When I read Latin Americans I realize that we have the same relationship with the dead. In my culture it is also normal that spirits are there and that the dimensions of life and death inhabit the same plane. I recognize myself there. European culture puts everything in boxes, life in one, death in another; that, of course, makes you move very fast but takes away the poetry; it is efficient but boring. I also like Latin American music, so a project there interests me.
You have spent long periods of time in France, Iran, Austria and you have made films with English productions?What language do you think in?
I think I feel in Persian and think in French. I have the logical thinking of French, but my heart and my feelings know things that my head doesn't, and those are in Persian.
A Spanish version of this article was published in El Tiempo in 2021. It appears under the name of the editor.