«The Song of the Scorpions, or the depths of the Rajasthani desert

Cinema Wednesdays - Hélène Lavoyer

«Scorpion sting, snake bite, she listens to the poison. And she sings. The scorpion mantra.» Aadam

From the soft hollows of the dunes in Rajasthan's vast desert region rises a slow chant. «O my master, hear my prayer», intones Nooran (Golshifteh Farahani), crouching at the bedside of a dying man stung by a scorpion. The whole village listens, as if bewitched by the voice carried through the night by the wind, which stirs the grains of fine, beige sand.

A little way off, Aadam (Irrfan Khan) rises, as if seized by the beauty of the healer's song and fine features. Slowly, he resumes his seat as a tide of tears rises to his eyes. His traveling companion, apparently weary of following the fierce Nooran, proves insensitive to the ancestral chants she intones without fear or veil to heal men.

One night, when called upon by a young boy to save a man stricken by the venom of a scorpion, neither gods nor stars appear to save the trapped Nooran. She loses the battle. Violated and scorned, «torn from herself», she is ruthlessly expelled from her village and sets off in search of her song, which has disappeared along with that part of her that made her a woman and healer, translator and interpreter of the gods.

Yet Aadam's love-struck shadow never loses track of the almost-magician. Abandoned by all, and especially by her grandmother who taught her everything, who also disappeared on the night of the tragedy, Nooran agrees to marry the man she had the strength to reject and ignore for so long. He dares not touch her, but dreams of one day gaining her trust as he watches her moonlit face.

Nooran acclimatizes to family life over a period of time that no one knows how long and that no longer counts, and manages to win the love of Aadam's daughter. Her renewed hope and strength are suddenly shattered when she learns the truth from her attacker, shattering everything she still holds dear. Proud, Nooran lets the bandit die, soon to be buried by her hands under the beige powder stretching to infinity, and undertakes a revenge worthy of the atrocity suffered some time before in the unfathomable depths of the desert.

A musical voyage of initiation

Certainly, when we take an interest in the ’other« - in different ways of living, caring, eating, in the traditions of otherness or in its most recent habits - open-mindedness is increased but above all necessary from the outset, in order to welcome without judgment what this »other« has to offer.

This is what happens with Le Chant des scorpions, The first few seconds, when nothing moves on the black screen, as music from a timeless otherworld begins to play and a few names start to scroll by. The notes and their slow succession are like a throbbing pain that never leaves us. It seems clear that the simple love story we were expecting will be far more gripping than we could have imagined.

Like a call to life launched from the depths of the soul, Nooran declaims these prayers sung by a voice not without flaws, but transporting the spirit to the middle of the scorpion desert. With every note, every movement of tone, we who have never heard such songs before, feel at first almost embarrassed by such authenticity.

However, the commitment of Nooran's character, her youth, and her role as healer, pierce through the shackles and take us on this fabulous musical journey. Always present, even when the young woman loses her singing, the music tends to express emotions as much as to announce the events or vocations of the characters.

The ancestral practice Nooran inherited from her grandmother has an immemorial link with the gods and elders of this Rajasthani desert. Listening to these songs, accompanied by typical instruments such as the sarangi or the tabla, to witness the importance and beauty of spiritual beliefs and practices, at a time when in Europe they are tending to wither away.

The futility of time

As night and day scenes follow one another, each more beautiful than the last, each bringing a different light, mixing the beige hues of the sand with the varied colors of the women's saris or the turbans worn by some of the men, time no longer matters.

In Anup Singh's film, we can neither follow nor understand him. Relegated to the background by long scenes, sometimes made up of a large number of sequence shots and offering several points of view in tireless succession, the hold of hours, days and nights weakens until we accept that whole months pass between two scenes, and that it sometimes takes five to describe one day.

Given the film's length - two hours - it was indeed necessary to make viewers forget time too. Nevertheless, it's above all the beauty of a remote, little-known landscape, the beauty of Golshifteh Farahani's face and the prodigious luminosity contained in the images that keep us on the edge of our seats.

Social life in Rajasthan

One element above all others gives this film its greatness: the authenticity of the actors, who provide an astonishing insight into the social and practical life of the Rajasthani desert. Golshifteh Farahani learned Hindi phonetics for the film, and the absence of dubbing further immerses us in Indian society.

The deeply intimate relationship between young Nooran and her grandmother, whom she affectionately calls «Amma», hides many details and the finer points of a master-pupil relationship. There's the unshakeable respect for one's forebears, and Amma's harshness towards her granddaughter reflects her awareness that spirituality demands rigor and sacrifice.

As a master, Amma is cold and uncompromising, as when she sends Nooran off to sing in the dunes in the middle of the night, proclaiming wise words to him while tugging on his ear to the point of pain; as when she tells him that he'll soon have to leave and get married.

The subjects of rape and women's place in society are inevitably among the film's major themes, and the scene showing Nooran walking around with a thick cloth covering her face, followed directly by the announcement, by two elderly village women, of her expulsion, brings to the screen the indifference and the infinitely harsh gaze cast on these women who have been torn from themselves by others.

Ultimately, the film's aesthetic quality and its soundtrack, which require patience and arouse curiosity, allow its 120 minutes to pass without boredom. Even so, we noted the languor of certain scenes, and the uncertainty of their usefulness. The rather elementary script is bolstered by breathtaking images of the desert and, above all, by the quality of each actor's performance.

Write to the author: lavoyer.helene@leregardlibre.com

Photo credit: © Agora Films