It's easy to be seduced by the sumptuous cinematography of “The Song of Scorpions”, but all that beauty becomes mere window dressing, as the script is too weak to support the potentially interesting story. Once again working with international producers after his narratively ambitious second feature "Qissa," director Anup Singh conjures up an Indian story of a folk healer (played by Golshifteh Farahani) whose savior turns out to be the source of his trauma. Singh makes the most of the beauties of the Rajasthan desert, highly sensitive to contrasts of color and shape, but the visual feast showcases the anemic storytelling, modeled after timeless revenge sagas but without their powerful clarity. Evidently made for Westerners (although Farahani is soulful and learned Hindi for the occasion, Indians will wonder why a Persian actress was cast), "Scorpions" may have a hard time finding an audience.
Deadly scorpion stings are a problem in the rural villages of the Thar Desert, which is why Nooran's (always bewitching) healing powers are so sought after. Taught by her grandmother Zubaida to use the power of song to draw out poison, Nooran has a reputation for haughtiness that stems largely from a projection of independence. The camel trader Aadam (Irrfan Khan) is in love with her; she responds politely to her insistence, although she has given him a beating when some men feel he is harassing her.
Director: Anup Singh
Writers: Juhi Chaturvedi, Anup Singh
Stars: Golshifteh Farahani, Irrfan Khan, Waheeda Rehman
Soon after, Aadam's drunken friend Munna (Shashank Arora) fakes being bitten by a scorpion and rapes Nooran. When he returns home, his grandmother is not there and the double trauma takes away his singing voice and, to a certain extent, his reason. The villagers ostracize her, but Aadam, a widower with a young daughter (Sara Arjun), offers to marry her. Nooran is no longer an outcast, but she discovers something about her new husband that makes her plot revenge.
When boiled down to these basic concepts, Singh's story conveys the simplicity and directness of mythology, as if he had been recaptured from a traditional fable. The characters are built with some distinctive traits that make them seem like figures from an oral legend, but uncertain editing choices lead to narrative confusion. Some scenes in a brothel are just clunky, and Aadam's backstory requires some padding for the audience to fully understand her situation.
It's also unclear if Singh wants us to feel some sympathy for the man, even after learning his true nature, or if the director wants to let the viewer react. Singh's earlier work is unmistakably feminist, and Nooran's strength of character is viewed positively, but given how often rape in India even makes international news, one wishes the script offered a little more. of clarity in the way it is colored in the gray areas.
In visual terms, colors are not an issue at all, and the landscape of the Thar Desert (also notably used in “Paheli”) is gloriously captured by Swiss cinematographers Pietro Zuercher and Carlotta Holy-Steinemann. From the very beginning, with the black-robed figure of Farahani set against the golden browns of the earth, and soon after, when villagers walking on a hill are silhouetted against a pale blue sky, we know the film's payoffs lie in the photograph. A giant close-up of Farahani and Khan is worth noting shortly after Nooran realizes her husband's deceit: her face splattered with salt granules after a walk in the desert, she licks them sensually, taking control of the situation with a mixture of seduction and threat. Madan Gopal Singh's traditional songs also help distract from script issues.
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