First Hit: Very interesting story and topic but just adequate direction and acting take away from its raw power.
This is the true story of a woman named Soraya (played by Mozhan Marno) who is an unhappily married Iranian woman with four children, two boys and two girls. Her husband wants a divorce so he can be with a 14 year old girl he’s taken a liking to and who captures his lusty interest.
Soraya’s aunt and friend is Zahra (played by Shohreh Aghdashloo) who tries to guide her through this difficult time. Zahra is also one of the town’s keepers of the flame of freedom for women. Although the Shah of Iran is gone, the country's new government headed by Ayatollah Khomeini strongly supports a strong Islamic path which cracks down on women and their rights.
Zahra is against this crackdown and finds herself being the only person supporting her niece. Soraya, the niece, is concerned that she will not be able to support herself if she agrees to a divorce from her husband Ali (played by Navid Negahban).
Ali presses forward and constructs false evidence that his wife is having an affair with a man whom she was assisting as a housekeeper after his wife died. After concocting this evidence with the town’s Mullah (played by Ali Pourtash), who also tried unsuccessfully to seduce Soraya, they force others to bring evidence (spoken – no physical evidence) against Soraya. Her punishment for adultery is death by stoning.
All of the town’s males participate in this event with her father throwing the first stone, then her husband and then her two sons. The chanting of "Allahu Akbar" for justified violence during the stoning set a powerful tone of abdicating real responsibility for their primitive actions.
Zahra, relays this story to a French journalist who visits the town the following day and in keeping with her character Zahra wants this story told to the world. The French journalist Freidoune (played by James Caviezel) leaves the town and country and writes this bestselling novel.
Unfortunately, most of the acting was only fair to good, which took away the power of the story and film. The director wasted time in this film which was exemplified by the very slow graphic killing of Soraya. His timing resulted in a very hard to watch stoning.
And even though this story is focused on the stoning, it is really more about how people twist and manipulate religious law and their greed for their own benefit. I would have preferred more story here than to the elongated scenes of the stoning.
Much like Passion of The Christ (Caviezel was also in that film), pounding human cruelty to make a point can sometimes take away from the intention and actions that led to the cruelty.
Overall: This film tells a "needed to be heard" story, but doesn’t do it really well nor does it do it justice and this is unfortunate.