Spoilers ahead…
Few actors are as good as Irrfan at portraying fundamental decency. We saw that quality in ‘The Namesake’. We saw that quality in ‘The Lunchbox’. And we see it here.
Anup Singh’s previous film was the Partition-era saga Qissa, and the story revolved around a girl whose father decides to raise her as a boy. At one point, after years of wearing male attire (including a turban), when the girl wears “girl clothes”, she says she feels like there are scorpions crawling all over her body. The director’s new film carries that metaphor forward. One, there’s the title: The Song of Scorpions. But more importantly, there’s that constant feeling that the film itself gives you – the feeling of scorpions all over your body. Under the placid surface, your skin crawls, and you never know when the sting will come. I haven’t seen Anup’s first film, Ekti Nadir Naam, but based on Qissa and The Song of Scorpions, he likes to narrate deceptively simple fables that are really about madnesses and obsessions. By definition, a fable is a simple creation, but Anup Singh clutters things up with queasy psychological complexities.
You can read the rest of the review here:
https://www.galatta.com/hindi/movie/review/the-song-of-scorpions/
And you can watch the video review here:
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