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An Iranian woman (Shohreh Aghdashloo) tells a journalist (James Caviezel) a shocking tale in “The Stoning of Soraya M.” |
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. (Read more…)