Of all the terrible means human beings have used to put others to death few exceed stoning for sheer cruelty; it is death by slow, painful torture. The guillotine is a machine of mercy next to a stoning. Almost no other means of killing involves so many ordinary people in a shared bond of blood thrill while allowing each to claim individual innocence: It was not I who killed her. Onlookers to a beheading may feel the thrill of blood or vengeance but the hand dealing out the death is clearly another’s. Members of a firing squad may not know whose bullet was the fatal one yet all know any single bullet could be fatal. Those who join in a stoning, even more than those in a hanging mob, participate in a killing while retaining plausible deniability for their consciences.
This is the territory staked out by Cyrus Nowrasteh’s riveting The Stoning of Soraya M, an American production despite its Iranian setting and Farsi dialog, subtitled in English. The stoning itself, while gripping, and appalling — even knowing it is done with makeup, puppets and cinematic tricks will not persuade you it is not real– is not the complete story, anymore than an American action movie can be summed up by the final explosion and flying bodies.
While Nowrasteh wants to be true to the awfulness of the act — and wrestled with how much is too much– he is after something more:
“Stoning does terrible things to the human body, but we didn’t want to focus on that. Most of all, I wanted to capture the whole ritual design of it and how it affects the crowd.”
Before even that, The Stoning is a tight, tension filled exploration of how people, in many places and in many times, come to join an attack against one of their own, how difficult it is for ordinary people to resist the tide of emotion, their perceived betrayal of their values or the exhortation by invested authority, or charismatic leaders. Most importantly, to Nowrasteh, and his co-screenwriter and wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, it is also a story of how a few can and do stand against these fearful emotions and actions, and how very courageous individuals can, finally, break the walls of participation and silence and begin to bring change. Indeed, without Zahra, the central figure in the film, the book from which it came, and the real events in 1986 in Iran, he says there would not have been a movie.
Without Zahra, this story would have been too tragic to make into a film. But her triumph, her willingness to break the silence becomes something that inspires us all.”
The movies opens mysteriously even as the titles are playing. First we see, from Hafez, a 14th Century Persian poet, the admonition:
Don’t act like the hypocrite
Who thinks he can conceal his wiles
while loudly quoting the Koran’
then in dark, dusty streets of Kupayeh, Iran 1986, we see strings of festive ribbons, the smoke and coals of a fire going out, a woman leaving her door at sun up, walking quickly to a river to look for and find, and wash, and bury some bones in the sand, along with a piece of cloth with spots of blood on it.
At the same time a stranger arrives in town, his disabled car pulled by a bus. His arrival attracts the attention of the town mayor, the mullah and the woman herself, who sees him and his protruding tape recorder as she returns from the river. The men warn the stranger against her. “She is old and crazy,” and drive her off. She persists, however and tosses a small map and a mysterious object — which may be a bloody knuckle bone– to the stranger while he is taking tea. And so the story begins. It is her story of the events of yesterday –the “trial,” the judgment and the stoning– and the days and events that led up to it which are the movie, and were the book from which it came, which itself was based on a the event, the women and the journalist who brought it to public view in 1990.
It may be one of the most difficult films you’ll ever watch, not only because of the stoning but because of the family dysfunction, the father turning his sons against their mother, the complete male dominance in the village, the outrageous lies and political connivance, the sexual obsession; because the words spoken by the men are soft and reasonable, those of the women are sharp and antagonistic, an accurate mirror of the power relationships.
Many may chose not to see it because of anticipated revulsion. A quick inventory of what we do see and enjoy on the screen will suggest such revulsion would be somewhat selective. It is true that the violence in The Stoning is much more intimate than in most Hollywood mayhem movies. In its intimacy, and depiction of how villagers drench themselves in the waters of vengeful righteousness, it raises uncomfortable questions of how any of us might behave in similar circumstances — as the director intends.
As with all good movies, and this is a very good movie, what captures the imagination and belief is the quality of the acting, the rightness of the script and dialog, the setting itself. There isn’t a moment in this film that lets you escape the feeling you are somehow in the midst of actual people about whom you have opinions, injunctions and visceral responses. You wonder in the face of the implacable progress of the husband’s determination, and his alliance with the mullah, an old crony from prison in the days of the Shah, and who is the central governing authority in the village, what you might have done. Would you have had Zahra’s courage, and fury? Would you have disapproved but stayed quiet? The character of the car mechanic, widowed, kindly and very unsophisticated, and the lynch pin to the web of accusation, is an especially fine portrait of a man caught between impossible values.
Both of the women leads are absolutely amazing. Shohreh Aghdashloo, famous in Iran before she fled in 1978, and nominated for an Academy Award for her supporting role in the American The House of Sand and Fog, is simply incredible as Zahra, the central character. Her fierce, unyielding fight to defend Soraya –in the film, and in the actual events it depicts– and, on her death, to get the story out of the village and into the world is riveting. We are afraid for her as she confronts the men, cheer her as she out insults them, pray with her as she prays for Soraya and for her own strength. I can’t think of another female character in recent films as heroic a figure.
“One of the reasons that I wanted to play her was, before Zahra, I kept playing the voiceless woman … I never got to play the woman with the courage to do what Zahra is doing. Her strength is what most attracted me to the project. I think this is a chance to show that there are many women in this world who are not voiceless because they refuse to stay silent.”
Soraya, Zahra’s niece, is played by Iranian-American Mozhan Marnò. Though quieter in character, abused both physically and mentally by her husband, she is utterly convincing, in her stoic response to his treatment of her, in her kindness to the recently widowed car mechanic, in her tenderness to her two daughters and even to the two sons, one of whom turns against her. Even as she goes to her execution she tells Zahra, “I’m not going to cry. Don’t you either.” And we believe that this woman would say these words.
The men in the film are similarly well cast, and well acted. I was all but convinced that the mullah, played by Ali Poutash was the real deal. I’ve never been around a Muslim mullah but he had all the authoritative intimate speech, appropriate touching and hand gestures of priests I have known. The mayor, Ebrahim, played by David Diaan is utterly convincing as a man with some awareness of his complicity in an evil deed but without the ability to resist the authority of the mullah, or the persuasive anger of the “wronged” husband, Navid Negahban. It will cross your mind that these three should taste the bite of stones, themselves. Of course they won’t. As we are informed, when a man accuses a woman of infidelity she must prove her innocence. When a woman accuses a man, she must prove his guilt.
The camera work, from high landscapes to up-angle point of view shots, the interiors and particularly the close-ups of the dying Soraya and uniformly excellent. Not a complaint or suggestion. The score by John Debney is ominous yet lush, with an under structure of strength, pounding drums suggesting both the march to the killing ground and the unstoppable strength of Zahra.
I would say, whatever compunctions you might have, this is a movie to see. Even in the most awful circumstances it is possible for empathy and passion to find a victory.
The original novel, La Femme Lapidée, triggered a storm of concern when it was released in 1990 by French Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam. It was released in an English translation, The Stoning of Soraya M. in1994. He died just as he was due to attend some of the shooting of the movie in a secret location in an Arab country.
Some critics have complained that the movie is a provocation and a smear against the Iranian Republic. Nowrasteh says not; it has a more universal appeal.
“What intrigued me is that, as in movies like ‘The Oxbow Incident,’ you have a situation in this Iranian village where righteousness snowballs as more and more people get caught up in it,” says Nowrasteh. “When that happens, first reason gets lost and then soon after, humanity gets left behind. At the same time, there is often someone who will stand up against the odds and try to bring people back to their senses. In Soraya’s story, that heroine is Zahra.”*
“Yes, the film is a gripping drama,” he says, “but more than that it is a form of bearing witness, much like Zahra does in the movie. It becomes a liberating story about the power of breaking a silence and hopefully will encourage others to add their voices.”
Aghdashloo adds, “I’d just love for this film to be shown in each and every country on the face of the earth. That’s what I’m hoping for. This film is not really at all about Iranians — the characters could be Egyptian, they could be from Yemen or Somalia.”
It is one of the growing number of, what shall we say, activist connected films? The web site has a Get Involved link. The production notes cite some 1,000 stonings in various countries over the past 16 years. Other sources count about 150 stonings in Iran since the 1979 revolution. The UN estimates that some 5,000 women are victims each year, including in the United States, of “honor killings,” mostly have to do with sexual insults to a male.
*
For more links:
The Stoning of Soraya M official site
Production Notes with much background to the movie
What the Bible has to say about stoning — it approves.
Interestingly, Nowrasteh was the screen writer to the suppressed ABC mini-series “Path to 9/11“