The Stoning of Soraya M.

I have seen worse films this year than The Stoning of Soraya M. but then again I have watched almost 150 films to date so statistically some of them would have to be duds. Soraya isn't bad in the way that say Management (a straight to DVD title that will get a brief theatrical run at a single theater because it has two stars that somebody somewhere wanted to bang) is, nor is it bad in the sense that product like Wolverine unwinds as pure Hollywood crap.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is terrible because the director wanted to make a horror film but used his limited talent to instead make a film that combines islamic fascism with the sordid tale of a murder in a tiny rural community and tries to spin it with politically correct airs by making the entire affair look like it's all about women's issues. The film is simply a hodgepodge of agitprop posing as an art film. Unlike most films that I consider badly made The Stoning of Soraya M. contains stimulating performances and solid ideas that you may not be able to shake from your head.
We witness a cruel patriarchal punishment in a tiny Iranian village. Although the actual incident happened in the 1980s the story unfolds as though set in the present day. A traveling journalist (Jim Caviezel with a convincing French accent) awaits his auto repair after breaking down in the middle of nowhere. During his stay the village crazy lady (Shohreh Aghdashloo on an emotional roll) corners him and tells of a crime that's been covered up. Obviously she's not so crazy after all. A woman's husband wants a divorce so he accuses her of adultery which means the woman will be stoned to death.
Are you telling me that this same story could happen today in Iran? This was over 20 years ago. It was about ten years ago that a black man was chained to a pick-up and drug to death in East Texas. But a colleague informs me that "as recently as earlier this year a man was stoned to death for adultry
in the northern city of Rasht, Iran."
Soraya's story is related in a flashback. The director wants to show us the entire ritual. The woman has her hands bound to her side and she's buried up to her waist in the ground. The stoning goes on forever and if that's not long enough the director throws in bad slow motion. (When I specify bad slo-mo I mean motion that looks shutter adjusted like a video effect rather than classic high frame, highly lit camera slo-mo.) The Passion of the Christ had a lot of bloodletting but that was a well made film. Somewhere during Soraya's execution all I could think of was, okay the film is going to show this woman dying all the way to the end, and then we still have to wrap up the bracketing story of Caviezel getting his car fixed.
If anything grabbed my interest in the film it was the setting, small stone buildings surrounded by rocky desert. Although the context is modern the setting felt like the characters were still trapped in the primitive ways of their ancient surrounding. The Stoning of Soraya M. will inspire as many interpretations as there are fanatical political viewpoints.