Michael Scott’s review published on Letterboxd:
I'm not quite sure where Afgan film, The Patience Stone, was actually filmed, or how, if it was actually filmed in Afganistan, it ever got through the Afgan censors (must have pressed through the American side), but Atiq Rahimi's searing dissection of the role of women in Islamic society is an explosive example of how dangerous cinema can be when it dares to tell the truth.
It is a simple film, almost uncinematic in its construction. In fact, I was surprised coming out of the film that it wasn't adapted from a one woman show. In actual fact, despite its very feminine voice, The Patience Stone was adapted from Rahimi's own novel, and by a Frenchman at that: Jean-Claude Carrière, the man behind the adaptations of Belle de Jour, The Tin Drum, Cyrano de Bergerac and The Unbearable Lightness of Being (as well as last year's The Artist and the Model).
Interestingly, The Patience Stone doesn't suffer from this male-centric gestation,something that is undoubtedly down to the committed work of its lead actor Golshifteh Farahani.
Farahani is an absolute powerhouse. To call her brave here is the most shameful form of understatement. It is the depth of her performance that shakes The Patience Stone free of its contrived theatricality and moves it into a space where honesty and confession can rip holes in the fabric of society, religion and sexual repression.
Farahani is on screen almost every second of The Patience Stone There is not really anywhere else for her to go or, for that matter, anyone for her to bounce off, seeing as the film is almost wholly concerned with a conversation between a young woman and her comatose husband. It's a one sided situation; he lays unmoving on the floor strapped to an intravenous drip with a bullet wound in his neck, while she dodges her own bullets, guards her children and tries to find a way to exist while keeping him safe.
Trapped indoors by the roving militia, the woman's one-sided reminisces slowly become more and more candid. Compared to the streets outside, where she is expected to wear the body-covering burqa, inside, next to her husband, the woman is increasingly more exposed, both physically and emotionally. Candour turns to confession, confession to accusation and accusation to almost heretical, tear inducing revelation.
Rahimi's direction is sure-footed, finding enough visually to contextualise the war ravaged desperation without overriding the intimacy of the drama. Carrière's screenplay, with its long monologues is uncomfortable at first but flows beautifully once it settles into its stride.
It is the honesty of The Patience Stone that eventually wins out. We are given a rare glimpse into a world so private that its truth is rarely told even by those living it. As it is spoken, the extent of the damage caused by the brutalisation of women and men in Afghanistan is revealed in all its horrifying immensity. Watching the woman strip back that egocentric brutality, calling it out, then neutering it with nothing but words is emotionally satisfying in the extreme.
I'm only hoping the people of Afghanistan get a chance to experience it.