Some films are muddy. They give us good guys who are kinda bad or bad guys who are kinda good. They obscure the conflict. They make us guess. They confuse us. They dare us to unravel them.
The Stoning of Soraya M. is not one of those films. Yet, it delivers us a stunning lesson on the slippery graybrownness of evil.
We meet Soraya M. in the past tense when her auntie shares the story of Soraya’s stoning with a French journalist. The journalist is serendipitously waiting for his car to be repaired in a sleepy village somewhere in the bowels of Iran circa the mid-1980s as the country is sorting itself out following the demise of the Shah. Soraya M. was an anonymous wife and mother who lived in the village. Soraya M. was married to a big, nasty jerk who beat the crap out of her, worked at a prison in some not-so-distant city, drove a brand new sportscar, banged a bunch of prostitutes and manipulated the local Mullah to not-so-quietly run the village. The couple had two sons and two daughters. In addition to the husband’s prison gig, Soraya and the kids did some subsistence farming on a small plot of dusty rocks. After the husband grew bored with village life — and with Soraya– he sought a divorce so he could start a new life in the city with a newer, younger wife. The husband proposed terms for their divorce. Soraya said no. As soon as Soraya declines, we know immediately that things are going to get ugly. And we can surmise that ugly in a small Iranian village after the ’79 Revolution is a far, blood-curdling cry from ugly in a Western divorce court.
Some other stuff happened before the actual stoning of Soraya M. The other stuff is kinda important as it provided a sorry excuse to falsely charge Soraya M. with a form of adultery that didn’t involve actual intercourse–a petty crime she clearly did not commit. The other stuff also drew lines distinguishing just how self-righteous or savage (or both) the people in Soraya’s village turned out to be. As we learn about one supporting character or another, we see exactly how their actions helped drive the series of events that culminated in the stoning. But when we finally arrive at the stoning, it doesn’t really matter who did what or who cast the first stone. Nearly everyone in the village threw a stone. And nearly everyone in the village–save for Soraya, Soraya’s daughters and Soraya’s auntie–is a bad guy. A very, very bad guy. You could even call all of the stone throwers … evil.
Evil is supposed to be a simple thing. And it is. It’s Hitler. It’s Charlie Manson. It’s the San Antonio Spurs. It’s a nefarious force that is instantly recognizable. But why exactly is it recognizable? Could it be that evil is just a touch … familiar?
Human beings are neither inherently good nor inherently bad. We all posess an innate, undeniable capacity to sustain ourselves. That capacity to sustain can manifest in a number of ways. It’s most commonly understood — thanks to Abraham Maslow — that those manifestations form a neat hierarchy. At the base of that hierachy are simple physical needs (air, water, food, etc). The ascent of that hierachy is populated by more noble, less urgent impulses (friendship, respect, morality, etc). As we meet our core needs and begin to climb the hierarchy toward satisfying those righteous urges, our innate capacity to sustain faces different constraints which increase the risk that our capacity will be manipulated by external forces.
Is it evil to throw a stone at a rabbit when there is nothing but the rabbit for you to eat? Not really. No matter what Pamela Anderson tells you, your hungry belly will always yell more loudly than her silicone will jiggle. But what happens when a trusted religious leader commands you to throw a stone at your neighbor who may have taken a nap at her employer’s house thereby drawing God’s wrath on your whole village? If throwing the stone at your neighbor — who could be innocent — is the only way to preserve your personal standing with The Creator, do you throw the stone?
Most of us would probably say no. We’d like to think that we would have better sense than to be enveloped by a mob claiming religious and cultural righteousness as its motivation. We’d like to think that we control every part of our innate capacity–both the better angels and the ghastly devils–but sometimes we don’t. Sometimes the capacity controls us and our quiet desperation momentarly transforms to become a shrill savagery. We may not even recognize ourselves in those moments. Or maybe we do. If we do recognize ourselves … we’re overcome by either dastardly glee or a cinder block of remorse. Depending on whether we’re truly evil or agents of our own capacity.
In The Stoning of Soraya M. an innocent woman did not beg for her life in the moment before it was painfully taken from her. She barely scolded her neighbors for succumbing to their capacities. She merely sighed, “How could you do this to me? You know me. I have no secrets. I am one of you.”
Life — as anyone who has lived it will tell you — is muddy. The good guys always struggle to be good. And the bad guys always see just enough of themselves in the good guys to believe they hold an inherent psychological advantage. Sometimes the bad guys are right. And sometimes, the good guys reserve their stones for that unfortunate rabbit.