‘The Patience Stone’ Reveals Eternal Truths

Printer-friendly versionE-mail page to friendPDF version

Rating: 5.0/5.0

CHICAGO – Despite any manmade restrictions through governments, religion, commerce or trumped-up morality, the truth has a way of mightily conquering all. “The Patience Stone” is a perfect example of that luxurious truth, and it is an important contemporary fairy tale.

Through the most simplest of premises – a war victim is stuck caring for her vegetative husband – there emerges the passion of what is essential for human beings. Being authentic, unburdening the soul and coming to what is necessary in our lives to fully engage – that is what the film unleashes. The war zone depicted in the story is a Middle East-type setting, but is never named, and provides a presence to the native suffering that is occurs in perpetual conflict. The marginalization of women in these traditionally religious territories is another grand theme of the narrative, and speaks to the broader context of narrowing the humanity of females in general. This is a must-see understanding in how the truth will set us free.

A woman (Golshifteh Farahani) is in a neighborhood on the front line of a street-fighting war. Her husband (Hamid Djavadan) is a casualty of this war, shot in the neck and rendered to a vegetative state. The situation of the battles become closer and more grim, and the woman flees the home with her two daughters to find her aunt (Hassina Burgan). After she gains refuge in the relative’s home, she keeps returning to the house in between the shootings and the bombings, to continue to care for her husband.

Garden of Believing: Golshifteh Farahani in ‘The Patience Stone’ Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

Several incidences take place while she nurses her patient. One is that the home is raided, and through some fast talking she convinces the soldiers that she is an “unclean” prostitute (thus guaranteeing she will not be raped), Secondly, she begins to wile away the hours by telling her prostrate husband all the truths of her difficult life. He becomes her “Patience Stone,” a talisman that listens to confessions and disclosures. Further complications occur when a young soldier(Massi Mrowat) enters her life. There is a breaking point to the Patience Stone, and she is fast approaching it.

This film is co-written and directed by the woman who wrote the source novel, Atiq Rahimi, and the care taken in precisely telling the tale becomes apparent in a person taking her own novel to the filmmaking level. From the stunning performance from Golshifteh Farahani – as a “Scarlett O’Hara” in a much more brutal place and time – to the atmosphere created within the gender roles, religious burdens and perpetual wartime dread, becomes palpable in every frame.

There is a provocative portrayal of men in the film, as symbolized through the confessor’s father, husband and eventual solider lover. The male role model seems broken in the Middle Eastern culture presented, as the father is shown to be a scared, feckless gambler, the husband is a cold, lost warrior and the soldier lover is an innocent destroyed by war, but guided by the suddenly freed hands of the woman. The barriers built by the husband and father are broken by the lover, which like her confessions are part of what set her free.

The larger symbolic scenario of all women, not just the oppressed gender in the Middle East cultures, is unerringly brought to light. The aunt character is a prostitute herself, but seems much more self sufficient in the truth of that role than any other woman around her. She is not the “property” of one man, so she is able to advocate her place as a human being. Whether a woman is oppressed in marriages in Western cultures, or as trade-offs in arranged weddings in other worlds, there seems to be larger message at work in the film.

Confessions: Golshifteh Farahani and Hamid Djavadan in ‘The Patience Stone’ Photo credit: Sony Pictures Classics

The story is presented as a twisted fairy tale, with the “Patience Stone” the centerpiece of the moral truth. It says a lot about us as human beings that there can be free expression to a stone – or as in the film, a vegetative husband – but not the actual person that these confessions can have an effect on. The husband is one and the same, the stone and the person. That is the centerpiece of the ambience and originality of the Atiq Rahimi’s masterwork.

What would be your greatest truth, told to a symbol? Would that truth unburden you, even set you free? Does it need to be told to a partner, a fellow traveler or a parent? Get thee to a Patience Stone before the earth shatters.

By PATRICK McDONALD Senior Staff Writer HollywoodChicago.com pat@hollywoodchicago.com