He who has sinned may cast the first stone in The Stoning of Soraya M.Between a rock and hard place
By Ed Rampell
This hard-hitting (no pun intended) pro-women’s rights film isn’t exactly a frothy romantic musical comedy, and viewers need strong stomachs to sit through the extremely violent The Stoning of Soraya M.
By Ed Rampell
This hard-hitting (no pun intended) pro-women’s rights film isn’t exactly a frothy romantic musical comedy, and viewers need strong stomachs to sit through the extremely violent The Stoning of Soraya M.
It is based on a true story about the ritual mob murder of an Iranian woman (portrayed by Mozhan Marno, who also appeared in Traitor and Charlie Wilson’s War). Soraya is setup on charges of adultery by her philandering husband Ali (Navid Negahban, who also acted in Charlie Wilson’s War), who expediently abuses Sharia Law to dispose of his wife.
The ensemble cast also includes the superb Tehran-born actress Shoreh Aghdashloo -- who was Oscar-nominated for her role opposite Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog -- as the heroic Zahra. Jim Caviezel portrays Freidoune Sahebjam, the correspondent reporting for Western news outlets who stumbled upon the hate crime and wrote the 1994 book this film is based on. Caviezel co-starred in Terrence Malick’s 1998 The Thin Red Line and also played the title role in The Passion of the Christ.
The tie-in to Mel Gibson’s Jew-hating cinematic screed is revealing, as Soraya’s director/co-writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, an American of Iranian ancestry, wrote and co-produced the rightwing ABC mockudrama The Path to 9/11. Beneath the veneer of Soraya’s feminist façade lurks some pro-Shah dialogue and sentiments. The film is also curiously timed to open in (what the Ayatollah Khomeini called) the Great Satan’s cinemas shortly after Iran’s elections. Although your humble scribe is no fan of Islamicist (or any other religious) extremism, I really don’t recall any presidential elections held in Iran while the CIA-installed Shah (who helped overthrow a democratically-elected government, as President Barack Obama recently confessed in his Cairo speech) was in power, although I do remember the vicious torture his SAVAK secret police inflicted upon dissidents.
Having said that, Nowrasteh’s naturalistic touch and cinematic flourishes during the actual stoning (with enough cruelty to do his fellow rightwinger Gibson proud) are well-directed. But the movie’s power is marred and undercut by the conservatism of the writer/director of the 2001 made-for-TV-movie The Day Reagan Was Shot, for Nowrasteh is an ideologue who simply can’t resist injecting propaganda into an already hard to take film. Stonings are, of course, despicable, but viewers should bear in mind that they also take place outside of Iran, including at such seemingly peaceful places as missionary/Christian-dominated Samoa, where there isn’t a Muslim in sight.
The ensemble cast also includes the superb Tehran-born actress Shoreh Aghdashloo -- who was Oscar-nominated for her role opposite Ben Kingsley in House of Sand and Fog -- as the heroic Zahra. Jim Caviezel portrays Freidoune Sahebjam, the correspondent reporting for Western news outlets who stumbled upon the hate crime and wrote the 1994 book this film is based on. Caviezel co-starred in Terrence Malick’s 1998 The Thin Red Line and also played the title role in The Passion of the Christ.
The tie-in to Mel Gibson’s Jew-hating cinematic screed is revealing, as Soraya’s director/co-writer, Cyrus Nowrasteh, an American of Iranian ancestry, wrote and co-produced the rightwing ABC mockudrama The Path to 9/11. Beneath the veneer of Soraya’s feminist façade lurks some pro-Shah dialogue and sentiments. The film is also curiously timed to open in (what the Ayatollah Khomeini called) the Great Satan’s cinemas shortly after Iran’s elections. Although your humble scribe is no fan of Islamicist (or any other religious) extremism, I really don’t recall any presidential elections held in Iran while the CIA-installed Shah (who helped overthrow a democratically-elected government, as President Barack Obama recently confessed in his Cairo speech) was in power, although I do remember the vicious torture his SAVAK secret police inflicted upon dissidents.
Having said that, Nowrasteh’s naturalistic touch and cinematic flourishes during the actual stoning (with enough cruelty to do his fellow rightwinger Gibson proud) are well-directed. But the movie’s power is marred and undercut by the conservatism of the writer/director of the 2001 made-for-TV-movie The Day Reagan Was Shot, for Nowrasteh is an ideologue who simply can’t resist injecting propaganda into an already hard to take film. Stonings are, of course, despicable, but viewers should bear in mind that they also take place outside of Iran, including at such seemingly peaceful places as missionary/Christian-dominated Samoa, where there isn’t a Muslim in sight.
