sherni
Cast: Vidya Balan, Brijendra Kala, Sharat Saxena, Vijay Raaz, Neeraj Kabi
Director: Amit Masurkar
Sherni’s treatment makes it a different movie. It’s a simple story about a very complex matter: humans versus wild and their mutually exclusive survival. Some Bollywood filmmakers have tried to capture the emotional depths of human and animal relationships, but these stories never surfaced. Even movies like Haathi Mere Saathi and Teri Meherbaniyan showed the animals as supporting beings for the human characters and never as independent entities.
More recent ones like The Forest of Roar focused on the conflicts but never explored the possible reasons behind them. Sherni by director Amit Masurkar is unique in this sense because it shows the involvement of different parties interested in an immediate resolution of the human-animal conflict rather than a long-term solution. Masurkar (Sulemani Keeda, Newton) identifies three to four different parties and then has them deal with a prowling tiger somewhere in Madhya Pradesh.
One of them is Vidya Vincent (Vidya Balan), a strict DFO, whose unwitting boss Bansal (Brijendra Kala) wants to kill the man-eater with the help of a local hunter Pintu Bhaiyya (Sharat Saxena). Then there are local politicians and other forest rangers who don’t want to lose their grip on the issue because it could be beneficial during the elections.
Like Newton, there are no villains here either. Aastha Tiku’s excellent screenplay is full of sarcastic comments about the functioning of the administration and local politicians, but they all seem to be doing what they think is right for the local public at the time. Their means and methods may differ, but their intentions are certainly not black.
In fact, this is how Sherni’s story forces us to take each character seriously. Like a fly on the wall, you see Vidya Vincent navigate difficult terrain to get nowhere. It is indeed a complicated story: the government wants to save the tigers, the villagers want to use the jungle for daily resources, and the tigers need a fearless habitat. In addition, local politicians want to use the tiger as a trophy of their guarantee for the protection of villagers.
Add a dose of subtle humor to the procedure and you have a smooth story in your hands. It’s not the obvious kind of corruption we see in Bollywood movies. Rather, it is about treating wildlife as an inferior species. That is how it deals with moral corruption and how it affects decision-making in critical circumstances.
Vidya Balan, Brijendra Kala, Vijay Raaz, Sharat Saxena and Neeraj Kabi, all the main characters are in top form. They have thrown off their usual Bollywood image and stepped into the skin of the characters.
There is a scene in the film where Bansal, who loves to have his own ‘darbar’ in his office, stands in front of a stuffed swamp deer. It seems as if the deer’s horns are his crown. Then there is another one where Sharat Saxena makes a joke about tiger in a drunken state. These metaphors contain meanings and make Sherni a well-made film. This semantics is not meant to shock you, but to make you look beyond the obvious. It’s definitely smart filmmaking, something that doesn’t spoon feed the audience.
Vidya Balan has once again shown a willingness to take on an unconventional story and she has done it well, but Sherni is a directorial film. Masurkar has shown impeccable maturity in handling a lesser-known subject. Sherni deserves your attention because it is about synergy, your synergy with the environment.
Rating: 4/5
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