Why do I continue to read The AV Club? They reviewed “The Stoning of Soraya M.” today.
Say what you will about The Stoning Of Soraya M.: Here’s a movie that definitely delivers on its title. In fact, the title speaks perfectly to the film’s blunt, ham-handed, morally unambiguous treatment of injustice in the wake of the ’79 Islamic Revolution in Iran. It takes zero political courage to speak out against the obvious barbarism of public stonings or the oppressive patriarchy of sharia law, but the film whips out the megaphone anyway, eager to extrapolate the martyrdom of an innocent woman into a broader condemnation of the Muslim world. As directed by first-timer Cyrus Nowrasteh, who wrote the leaden script with his wife, Betsy Giffen Nowrasteh, The Stoning Of Soraya M. has a neocon’s sense of good and evil, which could politely be called “moral clarity,” but is more accurately described as narrow, tone-deaf, and thoroughly banal.
The Stoning Of Soraya M. crawls forward in excruciating slow motion toward the inevitable day when sinners cast the first, second, third, and fourth (etc.) stone, stacking the deck at every turn along the way. When it finally gets to the stoning, the film recalls The Passion Of The Christ in its near-pornographic fetishism of violence and martyrdom, which may explain Caviezel’s casting.
Here’s the link to the review, if you’d care to comment there.
Oh, yes. It was rated a D+.
Why do I get the feeling that the reviewer LACKS moral clarity?
One commenter there has suggested that the reviewer is using the review to denigrate the courage of the Iranian protestors.
“It takes zero political courage to speak out against the obvious barbarism of public stonings or the oppressive patriarchy of sharia law…”
I don’t think that’s what he meant, but it was a nice rhetorical ploy.
Tell that to Theo Van Gogh.
That was my first comment there!
It’s interesting that the reviewer complains that the film is “morally unambiguous”. How exactly could you tell this story in a morally ambiguous way?
“How exactly could you tell this story in a morally ambiguous way?”
That is what I want to know!
Mostly I read ‘em for their endlessly hillarious episode reviews of the original star trek, and their infrequent “box of paperbacks” feature.
Jimmy C – I guess the reviewer wanted some ‘good-guy’ stoners, or at least the victim could have been a neocon or Sarah Palin-type. I wonder how liberals can see with all that gray haze around them constantly.
The film is “blunt, ham-handed, morally unambiguous”? Well, so was Fahrenheit 9/11. I wonder what the same reviewer thought of that?
I was surprised to find that the same reviewer did write a review of “Fahrenheit 9/11.”
And it’s actually not too bad:
There are other parts of the review where he injects his own political reviews into it, but if I had read this review at the time, it wouldn’t have angried up my blood.
That should have been “his own political views.”
Actually, it takes a lot of courage IF you live in Iran. The point on the reviewer is obviously lost.
I’d go a step further, Skip, and say that it takes courage even if you DON’T live in Iran. The Danish guys who wrote the Muhammed cartoons weren’t living in Iran, and neither were Ayaan Hirsi Ali or Theo Van Gogh. But look what happened to them.
I’m sure the reviewer saw a whole lot of moral ambiguity in The Matthew Shepherd Story.
Or the relentless anti-corporate, anti-Bush, anti-government, anti-America memes in nearly half of all productions. That’s courage, putting Dick Cheney’s photo in the murderer’s office. Taking on the Religion of Peace and depicting it, not a bit.
You wonder what these folks would do in the face of Sharia themselves.
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Shalom
Beth El Jacob Frank
SPAMMER ALERT!