Review: The Stoning of Soraya M.

Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.” is a grim and solemn duty. This is no popcorn flick, to be viewed and forgotten. It stays with you, like your conscience telling you to do the right thing, the difficult thing.

Set in 1986 Iran – the Islamic Republic of Iran – Stoning is a gut-wrenching film with haunting music. Nowrasteh’s movie, set to open June 26, is based on a book about the crime by French-Iranian journalist Freidoune Sahebjam.

The film opens with Freidoune (James Caviezel) breaking down in his car on his way to the border. Spending unwanted hours in a small village, he is approached by Zahra (Shohreh Aghdashloo), a woman the villagers try to shoo away as they call her crazy. But Zahra has a terrible secret. She does all she can to get word to the journalist about a terrible injustice committed in the village the previous day when her niece, Soraya M. (Mozhan Marnò), falsely accused of adultery by her cheating husband, Ali (Navid Negahban), was stoned to death per Islamic law.

Stoning’s premise, repeated with numbing regularity around the world today, is made all the more pressing by the masses of Iranians protesting in the streets today while the brutal Basij militia tries to beat them into submission. But it’s one thing for a stoning of an accused “adulteress” to occur in Somalia, and quite another for it to happen in the soon-to-be-nuclear-armed Islamic Republic of Iran. If a nation thinks nothing of stoning women to death for the “crime” of adultery while killing peaceful protesters, it takes no imagination to think of what they will do when in possession of a nuclear bomb.

The film is tightly put together and the acting is natural and intense. The actors mostly speak Farsi throughout the film, but they communicate volumes, relegating the captions to a supporting role. Nowrasteh effortlessly allows his film to unfold. He gradually builds tension, while adding depth to the main characters’ soul. The end is inevitable as it is jarring, with the males of the village engaging in the collective guilt of the stoning while most of the women watch and wail. The act of stoning takes away the village’s “dishonor” one stone at a time, according to the mullah.

It is no small task to adapt a book to the screen, especially a book of the intensity of Sahebjam’s work, but Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh and Cyrus Nowrasteh have done the job with the precision of a brain surgeon. The husband and wife team add nothing more than needed, while everything needed remains.

Lastly, a note about John Debney’s music: it is beyond superb. With a cast and crew of Iranian expatriates making a film about life in the Islamic Republic of Iran, Nowrasteh could have easily settled for a selection of traditional Persian folk music. This would have been true to form, but likely would have missed the opportunity to tightly tailor the music to the requirements of film while appealing to wider audiences. It is interesting to see that Debney worked on “Passion of the Christ” (for which Debney was nominated for an Academy Award) along with Caviezel five years ago. Clearly Debney has developed a talent for producing Mideast-themed music for the big screen.

Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.” could not have come at a better time for the world. While Iranians struggle to transcend tyranny and most Americans, including our President, remain rooted in inaction, Stoning proves that Hollywood’s capacity to combat evil is still intact.