Irrfan Khan in a scene from ‘The Song of Scorpions’
About his last three years, Irrfan Khan continues to deliver at a steady clip. Supernaturally brilliant in life, he remains quietly cheerful in death. After a few online premieres, we got his first posthumous theatrical release in India, scorpion song, Anoop Singh’s film is not particularly cathartic. opposite the director Kissa: The Tale of a Lonely Ghost, it extracts a satisfying performance from Irrfan, not sure. Having said that, there is a way in which Scorpion may be special. Irrfan was an actor of soft surfaces in unexpected depths; The same can be said about this film.
there is a fleeting reference to scorpions a short story (Which was released in India in 2015 and can be streamed on Epic On). Kanwar, a girl who was raised as a boy by her oppressive but loving father (Irrfan), laments her growing dysmorphia, saying that whenever she dresses in women’s clothing, that’s how her body feels Like it’s “crawling with scorpions”. Singh revisits the hunter-gatherer motif in his latest, which is set amidst the dunes and bush of the Thar Desert. It is attached appropriately enough, with a sting in the tail.
Scorpion Song (Rajasthani, Hindi)
director: Anup Singh
mold: Irrfan Khan, Golshifteh Farhani, Waheeda Rehman, Shashank Arora
run-time: 119 minutes
Story: A camel trader in the Thar Desert falls in love with a singing doctor, with disastrous results
A man stung by a scorpion is brought to a tribal healer’s camp outside Jaisalmer. Nooran ( About EllyGolshifteh Farahani), a young prodigy, takes the victim’s pulse, closes his eyes, and begins in a low moan, his scattered notes gradually building and accumulating into a soothing chant. A crowd looks on expectantly; The song is believed to stop the flow of poison and restore its bearer to life. Night falls but, magically, the man is saved.
Also in the audience was Aadam (Irrfan), a widowed camel trader. Later, he approaches Nooran and requests her for her hand in marriage. “Nikah, meri jutti (marriage, my foot),” she playfully turns him down, accepting payment for her treatment services. From here the film takes a dark turn. Nooran is taken out one night on false pretenses and raped by a stranger. She loses her singing voice. His grandmother and teacher Zubeida (Waheeda Rehman) goes missing. Nooran is ostracized by his indigenous community. Interestingly, Adam reappears, still eager for his marriage proposal despite what happened to the girl.
Singh has built his reputation on films that unfold like folk tales. His characters are never what they seem. He is able to reproduce, in cinematic form, all the twists and turns that usually accompany folk tales. This, he somehow balances with the thematic payload of his films. a short story, set in post-Partition Punjab, dealt with patriarchy and displacement through the unusual conceit of a ghost story. now in scorpion song, he turns his attention to sexual violence and revenge. There are splashes of brutality, but there is also a lot of tenderness in the performance: hands rubbing balm on blistered feet, children giggling, Nooran and Zubaida huddled under a blanket in the bitter cold. Cinematographers Pietro Zürcher and Carlotta Holley-Steinman render the desert in a soft glow that, again, contrasts with its apparent harshness and the corrosive fate of its inhabitants.
It is perhaps this return to this moral and emotional twilight that convinced Irrfan to reunite with Singh. “I crossed a desert to find you,” Aadam tells Nooran, and the strange, mysterious longing in that line is incomprehensible in a different actor’s voice. Throughout his career, Irrfan played complex characters— Gangsters and dacoits, unbending patriarchs, lonely widows – without letting an ounce of judgment slip into their roles. scorpion song finds him in his happy place—watching the elements, feeding, picking up on life’s dissonant music only he can.
Song of Scorpions is currently playing in cinemas