Film Review: ‘The Patience Stone’ Reveals Eternal Truths

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Average: 5 (1 vote)

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.

HollywoodChicago.com Oscarman rating: 5.0/5.0
Rating: 5.0/5.0

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.

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.

”The Patience Stone” continues its limited release in Chicago on September 6th. See local listings for show times and theaters. Featuring Golshifteh Farahani, Hamid Djavadan, Hassina Burgan and Massi Mrowat. Screenplay adapted by Jean-Claude Carriére and Atiq Rahimi. Directed by Atiq Rahimi, Rated “R”

StarContinue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “The Patience Stone”

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

StarContinue reading for Patrick McDonald’s full review of “The Patience Stone”

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