The Stoning of Soraya M. is a movie akin to The Passion of the Christ, Mel Gibson’s 2004 magnum opus in more than one way. Like The Passion of the Christ, we know from the start that our main character, Soraya M., is going to be killed. We’re told this from the very start. Like The Passion, this movie is also unflinchingly graphic in its portrayal of the violence demonstrated against its main character. And like The Passion of the Christ, The Stoning of Soraya M. too gives us a heroic, messiah-like character who dies a seemingly unjust death at the hands of the law. The result, too, is not unlike Gibson’s film. The Stoning of Soraya M. will leave you breathless, in tears, and quite possibly traumatized for days.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is based on a true story. The characters are based on real people. The journalist, in the film, was a real person, a French-Iranian journalist who brought the story to the world in book form in the 90′s. The film is based on that book and follows the account of a young woman, Soraya, her husband Ghorban-Ali, and her aunt Zahra. The film begins in a very immediate way. When the French-Iranian journalist’s car breaks down in a tiny Iranian village you can already feel the tension. Then, when we woman begins to follow him, insisting she has an important story to tell, it heats up even further. Although she’s dismissed by the town’s elders, who tell the journalist that she’s only a crazy old woman, you know that something’s up. When the woman finally convinces the journalist to meet with her, and sneaks him to her house, she explains that only the day before her niece was stoned to death, the result of an injustice that she unwinds in the rest of the film.
Nearly everyone who would’ve seen Mel Gibson’s The Passion of the Christ would go into theatres knowing how it ends. The Stoning of Soraya M. starts out, right at the beginning, by telling us that she’s dead because the film-makers wanted us to know. There’s no escaping that. And it’s that knowledge which gives the film such a heavy weight that it’s unbearable at times. As the scenes unfold which lead to Soraya’s death, as unjustice is heaped upon unjustice you know that there won’t be a turning point, that there’s no hope for her. She dies. That weight gives the whole film the feeling of a very long funeral. At times you find yourself cheering for Soraya, rooting for her, and hoping that she makes it through—you forget—and in that way, you ride the ups and downs like Soraya herself: knowing there’s no hope, no redemption, but praying against all odds that something will happen. It’s unreal, maybe surreal.
The violence, though, is real. Like The Passion of the Christ, this film is graphic beyond belief. Going in, you know it’s about a stoning, it’s in the title for goodness sake, but you can’t imagine how violent and climactic a stoning can be. That said, it’s worth something, possibly a lot of something, that a film-maker doesn’t shy away from really driving home their point. Just be prepared to close your eyes, a lot.
The last point of comparison is Soraya heself. Like Jesus, in Mel Gibon’s film, Soraya is portrayed as a victim, a blameless victim of the law. Surprisingly, Soraya isn’t necessarily as much of a main character as her aunt, Zahra. While we follow Soraya as she goes about her life, as she is persecuted, as she is killed, it’s her aunt who champions her cause, it’s her aunt who tells the story. It’s more her story than her that is important, it feels. Following her death, as her aunt Zahra explains, it’s her story that must get out. It’s her story that she died for. It’s the injustice that must speak.
Like any movie with a message, it’s difficult to criticize The Stoning of Soraya M. It’s hard to separate the message from the medium. On one hand, this is a exceptionally powerful film, an extraordinarily human criticize of the system of Sharia Law and the nation of Iran following the revolution. On the other hand, is it good film-making?
Well, for one, the cinematography is outstanding. The setting, a tiny seemingly decrepit village in Iran is a breath-taking backdrop all on its down. Couple this with excellent camera work and you’re really given a sense of the feeling of the vast emptiness, the loneliness, which drives the plot in many ways.
With the knowledge that Soraya is going to die, I would say some scenes are drawn out to the very limits. The preparations for her stoning and the hours surrounding her death are just way too long and that’s a criticism which I have against the film making itself. Now of course they were meant to be long. We know she’s going to die and the film-makers want us to marinate in that fact. But the tension is already ratcheted up as high as it’s going to go, and drawing out those scenes served no purpose, in my opinion. In addition, the whole framing of the movie, within the narrative of Soraya’s aunt felt a bit worn. When she sits the journalist down and tells him she has a story to tell and we fade into the past it feels like a very tired literary device, unnecessary even. I know this is how it happened but for the sake of the medium, it could’ve been presented in a more interesting way, I think. But, is it important that some aspects of this film may have been rough around the edges? I would say, no.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is such a powerful piece of storytelling that it stands up all on its own. Maybe it isn’t the best piece of film-making, maybe it’s a bit drawn out, but all of that doesn’t matter. The story is powerful, it’s gripping, it is so heart-wrenchingly hard to watch that everything else just disappears. Stripped down, here is a story about an injustice, about a small town in Iran, about people caught up in something terrible, about evil that just spirals out of control. The Stoning of Soraya M. is the kind of view of life that will make you want to drop everything you’re doing and dedicate the rest of your life to social action, immediately. And I think, since that was without a doubt the point of this film, it absolutely succeeds.
I think the long-drawn out scenes help separate the audience from engaging with the film as “entertainment”, which was the right thing to do.