El Secreto de Soraya

I saw The Stoning of Soraya M. a few months back at a screening, and it was so incredibly poignant that just watching the newly-released trailer brought tears to my eyes. Tears for the woman upon whom this film is based, and tears for many others like her, throughout the world, who have no voice.

The Stoning of Soraya M. is well-paced overall and does a fantastic job of bringing the audiences into Soraya's helpless situation, as we, just as helplessly, witness the malicious or cowardly decisions of others that will eventually lead to her demise.

The film treats Islam with sensitivity and in no way implicates the religion itself in the brutal practice of stoning. Shohreh Aghdashloo's character, a Muslim, decries the stoning as against the will of God.

It is important to note that the film accurately depicts a stoning, and is therefore not for the feint of heart, but seekers of truth and justice will appreciate the candor with which it portrays the gruesome nature of the heinous practice.

I commend Cyrus Nowrasteh, Shohreh Aghdashloo, and the film's producers for their courage in making this film. Thanks to you, "the world will know."

I almost didn't go see The Stoning of Soraya because of how graphic I heard it was, but I was invited to an early screening and it blew me away. It's shocking and hard, but I feel like everybody needs to see this movie to understand what these women are dealing with.

Of course we need to be active for women's rights and human rights everywhere, and I hope this will wake people up to it even more. All the physical violence in this movie is played out in emotional violence every day to many women in every country.

This movie is also absolutely beautifully shot with a great score-can't wait to see if it goes up for an Academy Award.

This is, almost from the start, a painful movie, which by the end becomes an absolutely brutal movie and is almost all the way through a very frightening movie. Set during immediate post-revolutionary Iran, religious fervour (which has little to do with religion and almost everything to do with fervour) is running rampant. In the midst of that maelstrom, an already abusive husband decides that he wants to divorce his wife so that he can take up with another woman. But then he realizes that he'll have to support her, and so he concocts a story accusing her of adultery - the penalty for which is stoning. We watch as the husband engineers rumours and innuendo against his wife; we watch as the whispers become shouts and as suspicion becomes rage; we watch as almost an entire village turns against a woman that they all seem to know is innocent but whom they nevertheless choose to condemn, almost as if this warped action will prove their worthiness to God.

It's a brilliant performance from Mozhan Marno as the accused and condemned Soraya. She knows that she's done nothing wrong; she has an almost naive conviction that eventually people will realize that. And yet it's clear that from the beginning this cannot be stopped. The momentum is too great; there's no way to put an end to it even if there was a desire to.

In the end this becomes very graphic and bloody. It does, indeed, offer a brutal depiction of a stoning, and it pulls no punches as we watch a bloodied Soraya slowly die under the barrage of rocks thrown at her. As a viewer, you're left with a queasy stomach in stunned silence. In a way, although obviously the movies are very different, this reminded me just a little bit of "The Passion Of The Christ" - the bloodiness and inevitability of the end. Those who are remotely uneasy about bloodiness in a movie will want to avoid the last half hour of this. It is not for the feint of heart.

The story is true - based on a book by a French-Iranian reporter played by James Caviezel. As the movie opens, he shows up in town on the day after the stoning needing his car repaired. The story is related to him and unfolds for us through the witness of Soraya's aunt (Shohreh Aghdashloo). As the movie ends, the reporter has to desperately escape the town as he's chased by a mob wanting to prevent him from smuggling the story to the outside world.

This movie achieves a delicate balancing act. It shows the dangers of religious extremism, but doesn't come across as anti-Islam. Indeed, Islam is portrayed fairly here, Soraya herself and her aunt being faithful Muslims, who point out to the men their betrayal of Islam in what they're doing. It would have been easy to turn this into an anti- Muslim diatribe. It managed not to turn into that, becoming a critique, perhaps, of culture, and of the ability for less than honourable people to use religion for their own unworthy ends. (8/10)

I must begin with explaining that I have an extraordinarily high tolerance for graphic imaging. I've seen "A Serbian Film", "Antichrist", and the "Human Centipede"....non of which caused me to feel sick to my stomach.

"The Stoning of Soraya M." crushed me from the inside out. The sorrow that flows from the women in this film will follow you for the rest of your days. You'll see one particular scene (hint: its in the title) in your dreams. This film doesn't allow the viewer to choose between crying and having their stomachs flipped twelve times around; the viewer will experience both...to an extreme.

The plot is relatively simple. I've decided makes this film so much better. You don't have to try to keep up with a thousand mini-plots. You just have to try to stomach the main event.If you make it all the way through the last scene, take a moment to remember the message that came across your screen before the first scene takes off...."based on a true story."

Saw this film recently at a special "pre-screening". The Stoning of Soraya M. is one of the few movies you will vividly remember to your dying day. It is almost unwatchable, yet you can't take your eyes off the screen. To think that women are still going through this today, creates a sense of obligation to see this movie. I can't stop thinking about all the women who encounter this type of injustice around the globe. Shohreh's performance is stunning and she surely deserves an Oscar nomination. She literally has pages of written text on her face, in one glance she communicates so much. Though tough to watch at places, I don't think it any different then the senseless violence in summer blockbusters and horror films. This film is a testament to the hundreds of thousand of voiceless women around the work.