{"id":4774,"date":"2009-06-29T21:54:36","date_gmt":"2009-06-30T05:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=4774"},"modified":"2009-06-29T22:57:48","modified_gmt":"2009-06-30T06:57:48","slug":"the-stoning-of-soraya-m-cyrus-nowrasteh-2008-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=4774","title":{"rendered":"The Stoning of Soraya M. (Cyrus Nowrasteh, 2008): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden<\/a>. Viewed at The Mann Festival Theatre as part of the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival<\/p>\n

\"the-stoning-of-soraya-m1\"Some stories have a gravity that allows them to scream their message to the world without raising their voice above a whisper.\u00a0 Their power can be emphasized by the simplicity of the vehicle that carries it.\u00a0 The story at the center of The Stoning of Soraya M.<\/em><\/a>, based upon the book by Freidoune Sahebjam which is itself based upon a true story, is such a story.\u00a0 Unfortunately writer\/director Cyrus Nowrasteh did not have faith in the strength of the tale, and its powerful core is smothered in a morass of caricatures and forced suspense.<\/p>\n

The story is simple, though horrifying.\u00a0 Soraya (Mozhan Marn\u00f2), an Iranian woman and the mother of four children, is rejected by her abusive husband as he lusts after a young girl.\u00a0 She denies him divorce, fearing that her daughters will starve.\u00a0 When she is asked by her village elders to help care for a man who has just lost his wife, he sees an opportunity to rid himself of her.\u00a0 He accuses her of adultery, pursuing his goal through lies, blackmail and threats.\u00a0 Under the extreme form of Islamic Sharia law practiced in the remote community, the sentence for adultery is death.<\/p>\n

I’m going to break with tradition at this point and take my review past the first act of the film.\u00a0 If you don’t want to hear anything about the rest of the film, just skip to the last paragraph and make up your own mind about whether or not you want to see the film.\u00a0 But heed my warning – past this point there are spoilers.<\/p>\n

I feel comfortable discussing the whole film as the title of the film obviously announces its inevitable outcome, as does the film’s opening scene in which Soraya’s aunt, Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), gathers up human bones to bury in a shallow grave.\u00a0 We can be in no doubt as to the outcome of the events which will unfold in this world where women have no rights – the stoning to death of Soraya.\u00a0 What we watch then, told in flashback to a visiting journalist who Zahra hopes will take Soraya’s story out into the world, is the buildup to her downfall.<\/p>\n

The main problems I have with this film, as mentioned above, are twofold.\u00a0 The first are the character depictions in the film.\u00a0 Almost all of them are so extreme as to render them cartoon-like.\u00a0 Soraya’s husband is one step away from twirling his mustache and delivering a throaty “Muahahahahaha” as he roars through the dusty streets in his sports car.\u00a0 Zahra, on the other hand, is a shining beacon of righteous feminism, apparently unperturbed by the risks inherent in expressing herself thusly in the world she inhabits.\u00a0 Now, I’m not for a moment suggesting that Soraya’s husband was anything other than an utterly despicable excuse for a human being, nor that Zahra was less than a forthright woman fighting for the life of her niece and the rights of women at terrible personal risk, but painting them with such broad strokes diffuses their impact.\u00a0 I should feel that these are real people, but I just don’t.<\/p>\n

My second issue is with the moments of excessive melodrama that the film uses.\u00a0 In particular, as we move towards the stoning, the film utilizes a series of interruptions and distractions, which all seem designed to offer us a glimmer of hope, the chance that things may not go the way we know they must.\u00a0 But you cannot build suspense if the outcome is inevitable and so things feel forced and contrived.\u00a0 It cheapens the film, turning a lesson in the evil that people do into a thrill ride.<\/p>\n

All of this is can be put aside for a moment when the execution actually occurs.\u00a0 Depicted in a direct and brutal (though according to the director it pales in comparison to the real thing) fashion, as it utterly deserves, it is a sickening spectacle which any right minded person should and will find hard to stomach.\u00a0 As the rocks begin to thud into the half buried woman, the horrors of mob mentality, and of religious beliefs perverted by the desires of men, are rendered in graphic detail. \u00a0I’ve watched potentially worse acts carried out in outlandish horror films, but the fact that such stonings still occur in this world makes this far more sickening than anything a slasher director could imagine. \u00a0Yet even this is unnecessarily drawn out at the end, allowing the director one last, bloody, flourish before Soraya breathes her last.\u00a0 It is unnecessary and detracts from the films power.<\/p>\n

So, what to make of this film?\u00a0 Certainly as a piece of cinema these flaws, along with various plot holes (for instance, Zhara recalls events she was not present for) make the film merely competent at best.\u00a0 As a way of bringing the harsh reality of the appalling conditions in which some women exist the film has far greater merit.\u00a0 So, worth watching, but Soraya M’s tragic life deserves a better mouthpiece.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Richard Feilden. Viewed at The Mann Festival Theatre as part of the 2009 Los Angeles Film Festival Some stories have a gravity that allows them to scream their message to the world without raising their voice above a whisper.\u00a0 Their power can be emphasized by the simplicity of the vehicle that carries it.\u00a0 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,94],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-films","category-los-angeles-film-festival-2009"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4774"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4774\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}