As seen at the 2009 Los Angeles Film
Festival: Cyrus
Nowrasteh’s The Stoning of Soraya M. is the most didactic
exercise in white liberal guilt I’ve ever seen, grossly
oversimplifying the larger issue of nonexistent women’s rights
in Iran through a style that panders directly to weepy,
middle-aged Oprah viewers. It’s not that I don’t think this is
an issue that movies should approach—in light of recent events,
the topic is urgently in need of artistic representation—but
rather that I find Nowrasteh’s gruesomely violent vision
cartoonish. The only thing that differentiates the overbearing
gore in the finale of The Stoning of Soraya M. and that
of a Quentin Tarantino splatter-fest is that the former is based
on true events. But the ultimate result is the same: viewers may
leave with a visceral reaction, but it stems from pity for the
characters. And pity is the last thing that the Iranians—23
years after the events of The Stoning of Soraya M., but
many of them still living in the stone-age—need. Given the film
was made primarily for Western audiences, it should have been
done in the more understated, but truly angry style
needed to provoke political action. Instead, Nowrasteh has
fashioned a work that will cause little more than tissue-touting
faux-outrage, not unlike the recent uncommitted sentiments
displayed by President Obama on Iran’s rigged election.
One’s
impression of The Stoning of Soraya M. hinges almost
entirely upon the ending which, as one would expect based on the
title, involves the extended, barbaric execution of the main
character. The lead-up is not nearly as objectionable, though it
is mediocre at best, reflecting an inertly Hollywood version of
the events. The first two acts have an uncanny ability to seem
sanitized and emotionally muted, much in the way that mainstream
rom-coms aren’t sexy or funny despite their intentions to be.
The events of The Stoning of Soraya M. are horrific on
paper, but barely register on celluloid because of the cliché
nature of Nowrasteh’s overall aesthetic and sense of
self-importance. One would think that the story of our heroine (Mozhan
Marnò), who faces execution because her husband accuses her of
adultery so he can divorce her without having to pay any
support, would be reviling. But instead it becomes no less than
predictable because Nowrasteh and company display such an
apparent, over-the-top need to make it seem reviling.
Each element fits in with this self-defeatingly Hollywood style:
Joel Ransom’s cinematography is ruggedly beautiful rather than
just rugged, John Debney’s musical score arrives just in time to
hammer home the content – the list goes on.
And then
there’s the finale, which is offensive to any viewer of
intelligence because it so clearly exploits the realism of
excessive violence as if to make unenlightened Americans squeal
for 30 minutes before they go on with their days. This is not
the redeeming, spiritual exercise in grit that The Passion of
the Christ (which many in this cast and crew also worked on)
was. Instead, it just seems relentless for the sake of being
relentless, as if only to prove that the main character got
really freakin’ murdered rather than just murdered. For
instance, while the obligatory shots in which her sons are
encouraged to stone her get the point across about the barbarism
towards women in their society, they, like the rest of the
movie, come off as muted because they’re conveyed in such an
over-the-top manner. Even the emotional-when-isolated
performances by Mozhan Marnò and Shohreh Aghdashloo barely
register, only affecting the viewer in the movie’s few quiet
scenes just before Soraya is killed. Otherwise, The Stoning
of Soraya M. is a miscalculation of offensive proportions,
overdramatized and lacking all of the stripped-down qualities
that would give it potency. For a more enriching, more
cinematically honest look at the horrors that women Iranian
society face, check out Jafar Panahi’s Offside instead.
-Danny Baldwin,
Bucket Reviews
Review Published
on: 7.2.2009
Screened on:
6.20.2009 at the Mann Festival in Westwood, CA.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is rated R and
runs 116 minutes.
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