Literature and politics has, over time, delivered countless stories of friends, family and neighbours turning on each other in grotesque violence. From communist witch-hunts to Nazi Germany, living side-by-side with people you’ve known all your life is no protection against persecution. The neighbour who greets you affectionately in the morning whilst selling you a loaf of bread could be the same individual who’ll deliver you to into the jaws of hell that same night.
The word ‘community’, with its connotations of closeness and trust, is misleading - it supplies the illusion of intimacy. Often, lurking beneath the tranquil surface of a beautiful village, apparently removed from the sins of city life, resides the ugly face of humanity gone mad.
Paulo Coelho’s The Devil and Miss Prym is one interpretation of the dormant evil of so-called ‘community’. Film director Cyrus Nowraseh offers us another: The Stoning of Soraya M.
Set in Khomeini-era Iran after the fall of the Shah, this film tells the true story of a young woman, Soraya (Mozhan Marno) stoned to death in a small village for committing adultery, in keeping with Islamic or Sharia law.
As with all persecution, Soraya’s guilt or innocence is irrelevant. All it takes is an accusation and two witnesses – ‘any witness’ the resident mullah (Ali Pourtash) reassures her husband, Ali, (Navid Negahban) a nasty man determined to get rid of his wife so he can pursue a fourteen year old girl.
A ‘trial’ is held behind closed doors by a select group of men, without the accused present or anyone to act on her behalf. It is her father who first emerges from the meeting to announce to the eager crowd, proudly, that ‘she is convicted!’ and that the verdict was ‘unanimous’.
What follows is disturbing: galvanised by the excitement of the impending execution, the village boys gleefully begin collecting stones. There is a celebratory mood in the air as the village prepare for their entertainment.
The wickedness of Ali, the mullah, and Ebrahim (David Diaan), the mayor of Kupayeh, is contagious. Together, they compel and convince a handful of reluctant villagers to become complicit in the barbaric execution, with chilling ease. Mostly, the townsfolk are sadistically enthusiastic to participate.
Beneath the obvious intention of the film, which is to condemn this grotesque method of execution, and the notion that a man’s word alone decides a woman’s life or death, the underlying aim, delivered in a deceptively simple way, is the analysis of so-called ‘community’.
Soraya is brutally murdered by her own family and neighbours, people she has known all her life – how can this be? This is where the film’s strength resides: in the examination of factors that give rise to vicious mob violence in an apparently close-knit society.
Here, rumours and gossip can have deadly consequences; women are hunted with feverish madness and a determination to persecute them; shady characters manoeuvre themselves into positions that are above reproach to cover their acts; marital problems become public spectacle, family dramas are interpolated into everyday village discourse, and fears of being outcast terrorise people into submission.
In this context, the backdrop to this horrific event is religious in nature, but the film doesn’t attack Islam - it attacks the hypocrisy and double standards peddled by those who purport to be its exemplars to satisfy their own agendas.
The film looks at how religious dogma is cunningly and conveniently used to dispose of one’s enemies, settle scores, relieve jealousies, gain the upper hand in disputes, and secure power and authority over others.
More perversely, however, religious fanaticism allows bloodlust to be imbued with apparently justifiable rationales for committing monstrous acts. It enables the deflection of personal crimes or questionable behaviour onto others by pointing the finger first. Indeed, as this story reveals, self-appointed guardians of ‘virtue’ project their own deviant longings outward, punishing defenceless women for the impulses they themselves are unable to control, and that are forbidden by the Koran.
Shifting blame for one’s lusts, or personal transgressions, onto innocent people is a sure fire way of deflecting attention.
Thus, small-minded communities engage in continuous judging and spying, waiting for opportunities to pounce on their neighbours in self-righteous acts of condemnation, to feel superior or to save their own skins. Under such conditions dark impulses are allowed to flourish, and religion supplies its credence.
That Soraya is singled out and vilified is arguably an arbitrary matter – someone had to be the scapegoat for this bored, joyless village. Herein lies the tragedy, and the danger, of severely repressed societies: governed by fear and countless restrictions, people turn on one another. Inevitably, festering frustrations are purged in orgies of violence, where ordinary citizens become savage, spurred on by doctrines encouraging revenge and retribution for trivial disobediences, real or imagined.
The psychology of this Iranian village is no different to that of the Salem witch-hunts four centuries ago, (excellently portrayed in Arthur Miller’s The Crucible) – that this type of behaviour still exists in the twenty-first century beggars belief.
Countries in Africa and the Middle East decree stoning for adultery – but as this film suggests, the practice is more about village idiocy and petty politics than morality. Here, religion is simply an excuse, pretence - and rationality is the first casualty of the charade.
To make the act of pelting a young woman to a bloody pulp more palatable, the victim has to be dehumanised. In a sexist society, this is easy: man-made language has already divided females into two camps. ‘Good women’ and ‘bad women’, depending on the perception of her looks, sexuality, and usefulness to men.
If she is ugly, threatening, old, widowed, disliked or barren then she is a ‘hag’ or a ‘witch’. Conversely, if she is attractive and desirable she is a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’ – and if she is all of the above or none of the above, or has rejected someone in some way, she is a generic ‘bitch’. Either way, there is always a word to incarcerate a woman. ‘This is a man’s world, boys. Never forget that,’ Ali says to his sons, encouraging them to enjoy his violence against their mother.
In this film, the relationship between the language of brutality and the resultant physical brutality are clearly linked. Once it is decided a woman is a ‘whore’, there is so-called moral justification to have her punished.
With a rock in one hand and a holy book in the other, the audience gather around Soraya to stone her, screaming ‘Kill the cunt!’ in one breath and ‘God is great!’ in the other.
Sexuality is at the centre of the fray. The shame and guilt of forbidden desires fosters fearful and vindictive people. Add the violent, punishing God of Islam and His death squad, made up of self-appointed wardens who’ve given themselves permission to behave in depraved ways, invoking the name of God, and there is unimaginable cruelty waiting to be unleashed.
Beyond suppressed urges and distorted emotions, in a society that is heavily censored, the absence of games, dance, music, literature, film, or affection, spawns a profound and dangerous void – a black hole of nothingness. Where humanity ought to be creatively expressed, freely, there is silence instead. Shutting out the light of our collective humanity, illuminated by arts and culture, the exchange of ideas, and the sharing of talent, ushers in darkness and deadens the soul. This is where savagery is born and the fires of bloodlust stoked.
Public executions in general - and stoning in particular - serve three purposes in a repressed society. Firstly, it is the exorcism of rage. Secondly, it is theatre. It’s a show, a spectacle. In the desert of a dreary existence, it’s Technicolor entertainment. Thirdly, it builds community ties, however tentative, as people band together and act as one, creating the illusion of group cohesion. With the common language of ‘whore’ and ‘God’, the gang goes to war against the prey, feeling thoroughly justified and connected.
The Stoning of Soraya M is an important film – but more than that, it’s an excellent film. It is sensitive, sincere, realistic and focused; the right actors play the right roles, the dialogue is meaningful and the plot well wrought. The story and its implications are flawlessly rendered.
James Caviezel plays Freidoune Sahebjam, the French-Iranian journalist who first learned of Soraya’s fate and wrote a book about her, upon which this film is based. In my view, Caviezel (he portrayed Jesus Christ in Passion of the Christ) is one of the finest actors around. He plays his roles with outstanding depth and sincerity
Another notable performance is that of the character Zahra, Soraya’s aunt, from whose perspective we view the village, played by Shohreh Aghdashloo; Marno depicts Soraya’s hapless victimisation with profound subtlety, and the villains – the mullah, mayor and Soraya’s abusive husband - are unsettlingly authentic as the brutish patriarchs.
What this film reveals is haunting, and the effects last long after the movie is over, a testament to the director’s skill and commitment.
