Author’s Note: I saw this film a few months ago as Cyrus Nowrasteh is a friend of mine, father to a former student of mine, and a one-time guest speaker in my Composition class. It is why I refer to him by his first name here and so I come at this with intimate knowledge of the making of the film and having written about Cyrus previously. I just finished another interview with him and that piece will appear in the Ventura County Star Thursday or Friday. Link will follow when it appears.
The richness of the images of The Stoning of Soraya M. caught me well off guard. I know the director of the film, Cyrus Nowrasteh and know his work as a screenwriter mostly. I’ve seen his HBO film called The Day Reagan Was Shot starring Richard Dreyfus. It was a fine movie and while I was teaching American Studies, I used it in my class. I saw and helped to promote (not professionally) the film The Path to 9/11 that Cyrus wrote and produced. These docudramas are excellent film-making and extraordinary in their ability to relate complicated and nuanced moments. But “Stoning” is something else entirely.
To begin with, the recent press attraction to the film is because of what is happening in Iran right now. The true story based on the book by journalist Freidoune Sahebjam (played by Jim Caviezel in the film) is one that Cyrus says he knew he wanted to make, but his cynicism told him that it would never sell.
The story is simple. A young woman in a small village in Iran just after the 1979 revolution is accused of marital infidelity and “conduct unbecoming a wife and mother.” None of the accusations are true, but they are forcefully pushed by the young woman’s husband who is looking for a way out of the marriage and knows that if she is convicted, she will be killed by stoning. The rest is inevitable and powerful and so incredibly moving and sad that as I watched it for a second time, I couldn’t hold back tears.
The direction in the film tilts toward nuanced and beautiful patterns that arise not out of the simple social injustice that is taking place, but out of the relationships that each of the main characters have to each other and how they deal with their own obligations and senses of right and wrong. The most conflicted character in the story, the Mayor of the town, is ultimately the arbiter of Soraya’s life and he seems to take the job quite seriously. In the end, however, the absolutes of Sharia law leave him no choice and in a film dominated by boorish, chauvinistic and even murderous males, one cannot help but feel pity for the Mayor.
The musical score, a work of art in its own right, captures the tension, the grace and the tragedy in the story. Cyrus took pains to paint the film with the landscapes of the Middle Eastern desert and though he cannot say for practical and security purposes, it is rumored that the film was made somewhere in Jordan. This combination of landscape and sound, desert and mountain, add to the emptiness one can only feel when faced with the injustice that Soraya faces.
Mozhan Marno plays Soraya and it is her grace and beauty that carry her through a heart-wrenching portrayal. Shoreh Aghdashloo, the Academy Award nominee for her work in House of Sand and Fog, plays Zorha, Soraya’s Aunt who tells her story.
Through memory, reflection, tight scene direction and a sparse and elegant script by both Cyrus and his wife, Betsy, The Stoning of Soraya M. is a film that transcends entertainment and moves into the best of what film, and even television when given a chance, should be – and that is a vehicle for transmitting important and timeless lessons about humanity, the human spirit, justice and ultimately, love.
