“The Patience Stone”, from Afghan director Atiq Rahimi (based on his novel),
certain combines Islamic values and civil war with a bizarre sexual and
personal vision. The protagonist is a
30-something married woman played by Golsifteh Farahani, who tends to her apparently
comatose husband (Hamid Djavadan), who has been shot in the neck after a
personal confrontation with one of his own local people. He may be in a vegetative state, or have the “locked-in”
syndrome, as in “The Diving Bell and the Butterfly” (Jan. 11, 2008; see also “Sessions”,
Dec. 12, 2012).
There is cacophony and carnage around her, as the woman
huddles with her kids, husband, and aunt in early scenes. The few outdoor scenes, of an Afghan city
built on a mountainside, are quite breathtaking.
The woman tends her husband, and his feeding tube. But gradually she lets out her desires and
fantasies, with a candor normally unthinkable in an active marriage. She
struggles with the question of fertility, and the implications for her
faithfulness. In a confrontation with an
older mujahedeen, she says she makes a living as a prostitute. The old man gets
man, but soon a young soldier (Massi Mrowat) who stutters appears as a “customer”,
but soon the young man’s real needs take her attention. What will happen if her husband wakes up?
There is a lot of fantasy material about the male in the
movie, odd for an Islamic film given Islam’s strict sexual mores, as if the
filmmaker wants to show visually some of the pretexts for Islamic moral
beliefs. She undresses and rubs her
husband’s hairy body with oil, and then later undresses the young soldier, who
is largely smooth, but has numerous intentional burn marks on his body
(although the film doesn’t make them very conspicuous, fortunately). How
much significance does our deepest fantasy material really have?
The husband, when comatose, is supposed to become a metaphor
for a Persian “patience stone”. I thought that the Taliban and Islamic practice
in the country was Sunni, however.
Sony’s site for the film is here.
The film was a co-production between Afghanistan, France and
Germany.
I saw it on a Sunday afternoon at the AMC Shirlington.
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