The Patience Stone
Director: Atiq Rahimi
Actors: Golshitifeh Farahani, Massi Mrowat, Hamid Djavadan, Hassina Burgan
Release Date: Monday 30th November -0001
Genre(s): Drama
Running time: France minutes
Known only as 'the woman' Golshitifeh Farahani (About Elly) is the wife to 'the man' (Hamid Djavadan) who lies prone on the floor of their sparsely furnished house somewhere in Afghanistan. With her husband unconscious with a bullet in his neck (the result of a fight), the woman keeps vigil despite incoming mortars and a militia roaming the streets, using the time to say the things she always wanted to say to him...
An odd set up this. It's directed by Atiq Rahimi, using his own novel as source material, but the adaptation itself is by acclaimed French writer Jean-Claude Carriere (Belle du Jour, The Unbearable Lightness Of Being), who offers up a very literary adaptation. Perhaps stage seems a better fit than film because with Golshitifeh Farahani pacing her small room (despite the occasional street scene, and other scenes in other rooms, this is basically a one-room set up), she talks to her comatose husband in a manner solely to clue the viewer in on her inner thoughts, feelings and backstory. She ends up being her own narrator. Every now and then she might stop and exclaim, 'Why am I telling you this?' For us, my dear.
This confessional tone brings about some involving scenes when Farahani divulges the darkest secrets she accumulated over her ten-year marriage with this now silent monster. These series of monologues are broken every now and then by a trip to her aunt's, when the mullah stops by, and when a shy soldier with a stammer (Mrowat) takes a shine to her.
But despite another terrific turn from Farahani, who has a lot to do on her own, and it being a powerful feminist statement, time can drag: a film called The Patience Stone is a slow film? You can insert your own joke here. The relationship with the soldier is stop-start and the militia menace slips into the non-threatening background despite Rahimi going to the trouble of shooting the gruesome aftermath of a massacre.
