Afghan author Atiq Rahimi directs this tale, based on his own novel, of a woman in an unnamed city, during an unspecified conflict, nursing her paralysed older husband. It’s film as fable, a poetic cinematic allegory of the position of Middle Eastern Muslim women. Iranian actress Golshifteh Farahani carries the majority of the movie in a committed performance, exemplifying female passion repressed by patriarchal power. As she pours her heart out to her immobile patient she reveals her life story and gains in confidence. Her inert husband becomes like the fabled patience stone: “Tell it everything. The stone listens and one day bursts. And on that day – you are freed.”
Despite flashbacks, this is very much a confined chamber piece. A dialogue-heavy, overly theatrical musing on the position of women that never escapes its underlying metaphorical subtext. Patriarchal society, unable to express love, expresses war, repressing women who can explore their own individuality only when men are incapacitated.
Audiences will either welcome it as worthy art-house cinema examining the position of women in the Middle East, or loathe it for failing to get beyond the self-imposed limitations of its worthy intent. What lifts the film beyond dusty literary metaphor is the cinematography, which contrasts the tale’s fable-like quality with the harsh realism of war. That, and Farahani, who imbues her character with enough sensuality, intelligence and humanity to make us care for her as something more than a symbol of repression.
‘The Patience Stone’ Movie Times
