Sherni: A Literal & A Figurative Tigress Fight For Their Territory
The opening scene of Sherni sets the mood for the film. A man is enacting a tiger, crawling on all 4s – snarling & growling. For a few seconds he is looking straight at the audience as if drawing them in, before looking away, but by then you have become a part of the movie as more than just an audience member, your sense of intrigue is now mixed with discomfort & dread.
These emotions run through the duration of the film – be it when a goat is used as a bait for the tigress & the jeering of the officers when they find it terrified but alive making you sympathise with the goat in a very odd personal way as if you have been in a similar position yourself – baited and then battered, the sudden assault of music or crass people in the middle of a jungle or the last scene (more on that later). The film reminds you to question again & again who really is the wild untamed beast here, who is the one encroaching upon the others’ rights, who is the one we should really be scared of?
Vidya Vincent (a name that is strangely almost always taken in full once revealed as if to make a point about the affiliations it offers perhaps?) is the newest forest official at Bijaspur – her first field position. She has joined just as a man-eater tigress starts creating havoc in the area. What follows is a commentary on the politics & power nexus surrounding environmental conservation. The villagers are the most affected by this wild beast yet they are the most ignored, at least until Vidya is posted in the area. Logical and cool headed, she tries to get to the bottom of the problem & figure out a solution acceptable to all. However she is alone in this mission, save a local professor & some junior colleagues.
There are a couple of things like an innate humour that this Masurkar directorial doesn’t quite get right, especially (& unfairly in my opinion) if compared to his earlier film Newton simply because the subject matter at hand is very different. But what it does get right are the characters it, the haunting factor of the of the story hand and the presentation of a very real problem in a succinct manner without falling into idealistic trappings on the way.
Amit Masurkar is able to get into the skin of his characters, especially of men with fragile egos. Their big talk, zero action persona; their lashing out at subordinates when “insulted” by a woman; their smartly crafted ways of undermining women even in positions of power – it’s captured so realistically that you can literally identify similar people from your own life, especially if you are a woman.
From professional environment to personal, Masurkar is able to capture the intricacies of this strange form of forced subordination. Vidya’s husband casually undermines her problems while her boss constantly talks over her. If you were to point such behaviours out, even to the most conscientious men, they would have a hard time accepting their fault conditioned as they are. There is no outright rejection of Vidya’s position because of her gender but you can see the conditioning shining through regardless. Similarly, Vidya Vincent never verbally laments about this but her eyes, her body language express her frustration.
It’s the little things like this which make this film interesting – from Vidya trying to wield authority by refusing to add a respectful suffix to the name of the jungle contractor or hiding a gift from her boss to the local MLA.
Vidya Balan delivers an understated, identifiable performance while Vijay Raaz is perfect as the mild mannered but passionate environmentalist professor. Neeraj Kabi is characteristically soft but purposeful. The men who made me want to get inside the screen and throttle them deserve a special mention – Sharat Saxena as the “outside” expert, Satyakam Anand as one half of the local political nexus & Brijendra Kala as Vidya’s senior.
However it’s the last scene which will stay with me for a long time. Set in a natural history museum, the camerawork here is specially phenomenal as it lingers on the eyes of those stuffed animals in the taxidermy exhibits – all asking uncomfortable questions without saying a word – and then they look away, perhaps knowing that either you don’t care enough or you just can’t do enough or perhaps it’s just too late now to ask anything at all.
👩🏾💻 – Amazon Prime Video
Direction – Amit Masurkar
Cast – Vidya Balan, Vijay Raaz, Brajendra Kala, Sharat Saxena, Ila Arun, Sampa Mandal
