'Stoning of Soraya M.' tells shocking, true tale

Colorado-born director Cyrus Nowrasteh takes a huge storytelling risk in his bold and controversial "The Stoning of Soraya M."

During the scene that we are dreading to see, villagers in a small Iranian town tie up a woman accused of infidelity, bury her in the ground up to her waist, then spend hours pelting her with rocks until she bleeds to death.

In one quick shot, Nowrasteh's camera takes the woman's point-of-view, so that we see the rocks being hurled directly at us, the audience.

This could easily have been a cheesy and cheap way to win easy empathy for the victim. But Nowrasteh has laid the foundation for this moment by allowing us to know this woman, to understand her and connect with her.

So when the rocks fall on us, we feel her pain and her terror as much as a cinematic experience can allow.

No matter how much I tell you about what happens in this movie, no matter how detailed and descriptive I get, you will still be outraged. Still be upset. Still be shocked.

Because the movie doesn't concentrate only on violent acts as Hollywood movies often do, but it also focuses on the realistic ramifications of violence, as Hollywood movies mostly do not. (We, as a culture, like our violence to be entertaining.)

"The Stoning of Soraya M." is based on a true event that happened in 1986 Iran.

The drama opens as a passing journalist (James Caviezel in very odd makeup) gets his car radiator fixed in a small village. A strange woman named Zahra (the charismatic Shohreh Aghdashloo) presses to meet with him privately. She says she has a story to tell him. He puts her on tape.

She tells him about her niece Soraya M. (Mozhan Marno), and how she refused to divorce her cheating husband Ali (Navid Negahban), who wants to marry a 14-year-old girl. Ali turns his two sons against his willful wife, and ignores his daughters as if they don't exist.

Zahra whisks the journalist through a conspiracy between Ali and a local religious leader, Mullah (Ali Pourtash), to pressure the father of a mentally challenged boy to accuse Soraya of adultery, a capital offense punishable by stoning.

The militant Zahra lays out to the journalist the political components that combined to create a public tragedy.

Nowrasteh doesn't exhibit great flair with a camera here, but that's OK, The story and superlative cast provide all the power necessary to create a movie experience with a terrible, electrifying sequence.

Still, "The Stoning of Soraya M." reveals itself to be more of a dramatic feature than a factual documentary, especially when the screenplay, based on Freidoune Sahebjam's book, paints the women to be virtuous saints (Zahra is a strong Iranian women's libber; Soraya is a perfect mom and innocent woman), while all the men are scheming evildoers or their weak minions.

Even David Diaan's honest mayor pleads with God to send him a sign to stop the execution if Soraya is innocent. When he actually receives a sign loud and clear, the mayor disregards it and bends to the will of the mob.

I haven't been this shaken by a story since I read the final paragraph in Shirley Jackson's classic horror tale "The Lottery."

"The Stoning of Soraya M."

Rating: 3½ stars

Starring: Shohreh Aghdashloo, Mozhan Marno, James Caviezel, Navid Negahban

Directed by: Cyrus Nowrasteh

Other: At the Century Centre in Chicago. A Roadside Attractions release. Rated R for language, violence. 116 minutes