Atiq Rahimi's The Patience Stone has been adapted from the
director's own award-winning novel, but perhaps Rahimi would have been better
advised to bring his story to life on the stage. The drama is confined to a
couple of interior locations, peopled by a handful of characters, and much of
the dialogue is spoken in long, unbroken monologues. Given the premise of the
story, the static nature of The Patience Stone is perhaps to be expected, but
it does prove to be a stumbling block that the film can't entirely negotiate. A
story of this nature may flows beautifully on the page, or benefit from the
intimacy of a theatre, but on screen it would require an enormous amount of
subtlety and skill to let such a tale. The Patience Stone occasionally falters
at these hurdles, but in between those missteps there are moments of real
emotional force.
The allegorical nature of The Patience Stone is evident from
the lack of clear information we are given about the characters and their
situation. The lead character isn't given a name, and she is credited only as The
Woman. Played by Golshifteh Farahani, she is living in an unnamed village that
apparently exists on the frontlines of some conflict, with her husband (Hamid
Djavadan) and two young children. Her husband, however, is barely there. Having
been wounded in battle, he lies immobile and uncommunicative in their home, with
eyes open but for all appearances dead to the world. Her relatives have fled,
and she has to tend to her husband, raise their children, and endure the
frequent bombings and raids alone.
Of course, in some respects, the woman has always been
alone. The Patience Stone makes it clear that she has rarely been treated with
any kind of affection by her husband in the ten years that they have been
together. When she married him at the age of 17, he wasn't even present at the
wedding, and a flashback shows her disconsolately sitting next to a photograph
of her husband and his dagger resting on a chair, while he was away fighting
some war. Now, with him unable to respond, the power dynamic in their
relationship has suddenly shifted, and she begins to talk to her husband in a
way that she has never been able to before. Her aunt (Hassina Burgan, whose wry presence is very welcome), who works in the city as a prostitute, tells her a
tale from folklore, about a small rock called a patience stone. If you tell all
of your troubles to this rock, it will absorb everything you say and then
shatter, delivering you of the troubles that are causing such anguish. For this
woman, her husband is now a patience stone.
With a film that is essentially one long monologue, Rahimi has to work hard to prevent monotony from setting in. He
uses the camera elegantly and finds effective compositions around Farahani and Djavadan,
which is no mean feat, given that one of them is comatose throughout. Legendary
screenwriter Jean-Claude Carrière has helped Rahimi bring his story to the screen,
and perhaps he is responsible for the occasional flashback scenes, which
dramatise the events Farahani is recounting and help to open up a film that
sometimes feels repetitive (long monologues followed by shots of the woman
walking to-and-fro across the village). Further dramatic turns are provided by
the male characters who come into her home; an older soldier (Hatim Seddiki) who
chastises her for living an impure life, and a younger recruit who fall in love
with her. The young man has a debilitating stutter ("He should fuck with his
tongue and talk with his cock," the woman's aunt suggests) but his
timidity allows her to control their relationship, and draw from him a tenderness
that is vanishingly rare from the men in her life.
One reason why The Patience Stone works as well as it does
is the central performance from Golshifteh Farahani. The film is essentially a
one-woman show, with Farahani being asked to carry every scene, but the actress
responds with a riveting display that matches the exceptional work we saw from
her in Asghar Farhadi's About Elly. What's most impressive about the
performance is the way she gradually exposes her character's inner self, as she
reveals more secrets to her husband and discovers a voice that has remained
hidden for years. The Patience Stone never entirely frees itself from the
confines of its premise, but this exploration of a woman's role in Afghan
society is a bold and engrossing fable, and one that's blessed with a number of
transcendent moments thanks to Farahani's powerfully moving work.
