I have never seen anything on screen so shocking and horrifying as this brutal event
Sahebjam, an investigative journalist, was in Iran shortly after the fall of the shah. He was stranded in a rural village, where he learned about Soraya M and her cruel fate from her aunt.
The book he wrote about her murder created a stir in France and later in other countries. Now it has been filmed by Cyrus Nowrasteh, a US- born man of Iranian descent, who has made several films, including the controversial The Path to 9/11.
That's the film's pedigree, but the experience of watching it is completely different. It does not unfold in an honest, neutral, documentary style as it recounts this tragic event. It is structured more like a melodramatic thriller.
The car of the journalist Freidoune (Jim Caviezel) breaks down in a tiny village and he is surprised by the attention he gets from the village's mayor (David Diaan) and mullah (Ali Pourtrash). They are jittery and want to know why he is there and who sent him.
It's only when Freidoune is virtually hijacked by an older woman, Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), that he hears the terrible story of how a blameless wife, Soraya (Mozhan Marno), was denounced as an adulteress by her husband, Ali (Navid Negahban). Ali's motives were base. He was romancing the daughter of rich man and wanted to become rich by ridding himself of Soraya, so that he could marry the younger woman.
Soraya's pride made her refuse Ali's humiliating compromise offers. Her scheming husband denounced her as an adulteress and, according to sharia law, she had to be punished by stoning.
We are shown scenes in which Ali threatens to expose the mullah as a corrupt official who worked to sustain the shah's regime. When it was obvious that the shah would fall, the official destroyed all evidence of his previous job and set himself up as a mullah in the village. Ali threatens to unmask him if he does not get rid of Soraya, and that is how the clamour for her death begins.
Some women, like Zahra, try to intercede - but the others are too scared or too jealous of Soraya. Events sweep along at a frightening pace that culminates in the public stoning of Soraya. Her father and her two sons are made to throw the first stones, and to watch as she dies in agony.
I have never seen anything on screen so shocking and horrifying as this brutal event, which seems to go on for at least 10 minutes. But that sense of revulsion prodded me into another kind of emotion. I had the distinct feeling that I was being manipulated.
The film is structured like a suspenseful melodrama. The characters are either completely blameless or self-serving bigots. The script allows no middle ground, no space for reflection - and, indeed, no room to breathe.
I know that such executions do occur and I don't, for a second, doubt that Soraya M was stoned by her friends and family because the sharia court ordered it.
I just wonder if the film's manipulative structure, which offers the audience only saintly souls or vile sinners, is the right way to tell a story so fraught with greater meaning.
As Zahra, Shohreh Aghdashloo gives a stunning performance - but as I walked out of the cinema, I couldn't help wondering why this outspoken, combative woman was tolerated in the village.
As the film ends, she stands in the middle of the road with her burkah flung wide, like an avenging angel. It's a marvellous visual moment - but you have to ask why the men who had just stoned a modest, quiet woman, did nothing to silence the bold, mocking, confrontational Zahra.
The emotional mood is inconsistent, and when I thought about it, I wondered if the film's emotive and manipulative structure can be trusted. Its message is good. However, it is delivered with a bold "The World Must Know" flourish that will, no doubt, be praised by Amnesty International's "Campaign to End Stoning" but feels more like a slogan than an insight
When I think of Iranian filmmaker Majid Majidi, with films such asBaran, Children of Heaven, Colour of Paradise or The Willow Tree, his profound, complex and humane vision of Iran is so much richer than the stark rage of The Stoning of Soraya M. It's a movie that tries to bludgeon you into submission, and I wonder what the Islamic audience is going to make of that.
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