As others have stated, this is an unusual film. It's amazing that the screenwriter-director who adapted his own play for the screen did not become another Salman Rushdie, with a fatwa directed against him. (Maybe that did happen and I just don't know about it.) While I agree with the film's central theme, the terrible injustices done to females in Muslim countries, I think the film goes too far to make its point. It ends up in the same category as movies like "Thelma and Louise" and "Sling Blade." Both of those films refused to include a straight male with anything decent or likable about him. All men were shown as being jerks at best. In "Silence of the Lambs," the only men Clarice could trust were much older (Scott Glenn, her boss) or crazy like Hannibal Lechter. The Scott Glenn character was okay because his age made him seem kind of asexual, not horny, not a threat.**SPOILERS** If its story is taken literally, "The Patience Stone" would actually be presenting us with a terribly dumb or delusional protagonist. The young Muslim woman who takes care of her obviously dead husband does not seem to notice any unpleasant odor coming from her husband's corpse as it lies in a room for several days. Nor does she take note of the rigor mortis that would have set in. The shock ending, which has this man suddenly open his eyes and become violent toward her after she reveals the final secret/insult to his "values" that is distasteful enough to awaken his corpse has to be taken in an allegorical, folktale sort of way. The filmmakers could not really be asking us to take his awakening at face value.As in "Sling Blade," in which a mentally challenged male is the only kind of straight male who is worthy of approval, in "The Patient Stone," only an orphaned young (still trainable) male -- who himself is abused by other men -- is worthy of the protagonist's love. Only a damaged male is a good male.**END OF SPOILERS** It's easy to root for this protagonist. She has been treated was than an animal by her religion and the men. But not every ax needs grinding that is this thorough. Not every pro-female-rights movie needs to demonize every male unless he is old or handicapped.

Atiq Rahimi's The Patience Stone examines that understudied thesis: Islamic terrorism is rooted in a repressed and perverted sexuality. As the heroine's worldly aunt remarks, the men who make war can't make love. Though the film is based on Rahimi's novel, its sexual and moral paradoxes smack of the films co-scripter Jean-Claude Carriere wrote with Bunuel. The terrorist officers are proud to rape virgins but refuse to rape a whore. That saves the virtuous heroine (Golshifteh Farahani). Conversely, the young soldier who approaches her as a whore is the first man to treat her with respect and affection. As the victim of his commander's sadism he empathizes with the supposed whore. The woman who personifies the will and capacity to survive is the prostitute aunt. That fate awaits the heroine's two young daughters -- if they are lucky enough to survive the male world of war. The reversals are as surreal as the bombed landscape. The central marriage is totally aberrant. The young girl was by arrangement both engaged and married to the terrorist hero in absentia. As a lover he's even more absent when he's there. His "love" making is brutish and violent. The closest the woman comes to a happy relationship with him is when he lies comatose and she can for the first time unburden herself of her secrets. After ten years of silence and misery she comes to like him when he ostensibly listens to her. For the first time she has a voice. For the first time she can express herself. For the first time he can not spurn her kisses and caresses. The confession that breaks through, that returns him to life, is her revelation that because he is sterile she arranged for another man to sire his two daughters. The woman needed to procreate to sustain the marriage. When he returns to himself his impulse is to kill her. Again male violence is rooted in a perverse concept of masculinity. For more see www.yacowar.blogspot.com.

In "Body of State", Golshifteh was great as an unbelievable native girlfriend of an American spy. Today, she is still great as an unbelievable abused "afghan" (?) wife. So her talent is never questioned (all the more that she may us forget that with her long monologue, she is actually alone) but it's her characters that have defects. In "Syngue Sabour", her father beats her, he gives her sister to pay a debt, she is forced wife, her husband is gone the wedding day, he is impotent so she has children from another man to escape repudiation, he is badly wounded at the war so she has to look after him, she met a stuttering lover, and finally, she lives in the middle of a war. Well, it's too much for a young mother and finally her story isn't credible. In addition, her character is full of contradictions: does she love her children or are they a burden? If her husband is so bad, why all her care? Has she fall with the soldier or does she plays with him ? And what about her final fate ?Worst, the world she lives in isn't explained: You can't figure where, when and what happens. The city itself isn't shown: you don't know where lives the aunt (or what she does), where's the house, the pharmacy. You are stuck in this bare room with its cave and its garden. In a way, with such a twisted tale and without exposition, everything is done to break the emotion. For those who would like to find a cry for Muslim woman, it's a disappointment because as it's too much on a side, it lacks a balanced truth. And it's not about spirituality per se but rather gender relationships in another culture.But, it's not totally crap either: Goldshifteh carries the whole movie on her courageous shoulders. She is intense as she experiences a hard life without any comfort and succeeds nonetheless to find happiness and peace. In a way, with such plot holes and exaggeration, the story could pass for a fairy tale except that it's not for kid but rather adult oriented as it's desire that's exposed.

The Patience Stone is based on an old Persian fable about a stone to whom one can confide all one's problems and worries. Here though the stone is an Afghan man, reduced to a vegetable state by the war. His wife (Golshifteh Farahani) uses his inability to comprehend and talk back to tell him things that she would not dare to say otherwise. With his disability she's been left to feed herself, her two children and continue buying medicine to keep her husband alive. The only job available for an Afghan woman in her desperate situation it seems is prostitution.Atiq Rahimi has directed from his own novel. He wrote the script with the renowned veteran screen writer Jean-Claude Carrierre. It is, I feel, a story best suited to theatre with its long monologues. The film however, belongs to and is carried by Golshifteh Farahani's magnificent performance. This is a very tough role where she has to, for most part, talk to a body lying motionless and unresponsive on the ground, unable to engage in any dialogue. A poetic film which is not for all tastes but which will richly reward those who appreciate its form and messages.