A walk onto the street, to get fruit
and medicine, becomes a frantic run for survival for the unnamed woman
played by Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani in The Patience Stone.
Suddenly, there is an explosion. A truck full of militia firing
automatic weapons tears around the corner, dust and damage everywhere.
The woman lives in a small house behind a walled courtyard, where she
has two young daughters and a husband. He is lying comatose, a bullet in
his neck, a tube with serum going into his mouth. The man (Hamidrez
Javdan - not exactly a fun part) - is much older. She was 17 when she
married him - or married a photograph and a dagger representing his
presence. He was away. And now, in this quietly fierce condemnation of
fundamentalist Muslim society's treatment of women, she begins to speak
truths she dared not utter when he was awake. The Patience Stone,
adapted from the Atiq Rahimi novel and directed by the author - aided in
no small measure by Thierry Arbogast's remarkable cinematography -
finds the woman telling her husband about the men who fathered her
daughters, because he was impotent. She talks of her longings, her rage.
After weeks of these confessions, something stirs, breaks free. She
meets a soldier (Massi Mrowat), and they make love. In Persian
mythology, the patience stone is a magical talisman that absorbs the
worries and woe of those who confide in it. For the woman, her husband
becomes that stone. It's a process of catharsis, allowing her to move on
- and allowing the audience a glimpse into a culture of religious
fervor, sexual oppression, violence, fear. Although the country goes
unnamed in this powerful, parable-like film, it is clearly Afghanistan,
torn apart by war, a culture dominated by men, by mullahs. But what
comes across more than anything - in Farahani's character, in the wisdom
and wild humor displayed by her aunt (Hassina Burgan) - is the
resilience of women. Beneath the hijabs and the burkas that conceal
them, a spirit burns fast and strong
