The Stoning of Soraya M. movie review (2009)

Cyrus Nowrasteh’s “The Stoning of Soraya M.” does not dramatize this story in a subtle way. You might argue that the stoning of a woman to death is not a subtle subject. But it would be helpful to have it told in a way that shows how almost the entire population of a village allows it to happen, even though most of them know of the woman’s innocence and her husband’s vile motives. How does a lynch mob form? Instead, we’re given a village populated primarily by overacted villains and moral cowards.

Against them is one strong voice: the widow Zahra, Soraya’s aunt. She’s played by Shohreh Aghdashloo, the Oscar nominee from “House of Sand and Fog” (2003). She knows all the players and all the motives and publicly calls them on it, to no avail. She’s a “crazy woman,” says the husband, Ali (Navid Negahban). The phrase crazy woman can fall easily from the tongue, and it’s worth remembering that in Victorian England a wife could be locked in an asylum for life on only her husband’s signature (see the great novel The Quincunx).

Ali the husband is an immoral monster. His intended child bride has not been asked if she wants to marry him; the marriage has been arranged. The village mullah goes along because Ali threatens to blackmail him about an old prison sentence. The mayor knows it is wrong and doubts Allah desires it but lacks the courage to do much more than mutter.

The stoning sequence itself is one of the most unbearable experiences I have had at the movies. I learn it lasts nearly 20 minutes. Soraya (Mozhan Marno) is buried in a hole up to the waist. Village boys collect stones of a good throwing weight in a wheelbarrow. We see blow after blow, as blood pours from her face and body. She accepts this as her fate, as indeed it is. She did nothing that was not innocent and kind.