Sherni: A Crucial Film on Man/Animal Conflict
When Amazon Prime first put out a pop up post on their home page about a new film called Sherni, starring Vidya Balan, I expected nothing much from the film. It was a poster of Vidya Balan in camo, standing in a forest clearing. The immediate first assumption that came to mind was this was gonna be a film with Vidya Balan as a honest police officer, taking down baddies and destroying all the pre conceived notions about her. In regards to the trailer of the film, I didn’t watch it, because I was totally convinced that I knew the plot of the film already, and there was no point.
When the film released and the reviews started to pour in, I slowly realized that I couldn’t have been more wrong about so many aspects of the film. The film was something that really couldn’t be put into a genre of types. After reading the initial reviews and some recommendations from my friends, I decided to put all my pre conceived notions aside and just watch the film, without any expectations.
Sherni is based on a series of incidents that occurred in 2018 in Nagpur, Maharashtra. In 2018, there was a organized man hunt for a tigress Avni or T1, who was responsible for the death of 13 individuals. Upon pressure from the local politicians, the forest department hired a hunter, who eventually shot the tigress dead. Avni’s death, or rather the circumstances in which the killings occurred, is the plot of Sherni.
As someone who’s been obsessed with wildlife and safaris for a the larger part of the last decade, the treatment Amit Masurkar brings to the world of this film is a lesson in itself. With the use of clever CGI, he manages to bring the forest alive with langurs, tigers, bears and leopards. At certain parts of the film, it almost feels like a documentary produced by National Geographic, with very light or no music at all, in the background.
Sherni begins with Vidya Balan, taking up the role of the Divisional Forest Officer, in a remote part of Madhya Pradesh, very close to Kanha National Park. Her first job as a DFO is to deal with the lack of water in the watering holes for the animals. When she confronts her other officers about this, they tell her that the construction part of things is dealt by Shakul Singh, who happens to be the nephew of the local politician. That’s the first hint about how the administration works in the place, with the local politician pulling the threads to make things happen.
With Sherni, Amit Masurkar is able to provide that outsider’s perspective into what a certain part of India might look like, and he gets the audience to understand the motivation behind the characters. In his previous film, Newton (2017), which was incidentally India’s entry to the Oscars, he followed the journey of a young man tasked with overseeing the elections in a tribal area in Central India. Even with the serious issues of Naxalites occupation, and voter fraud, he recognizes the responsibility of a filmmaker, and manages to represent it in the best way possible.
A very common situation with Indian filmmakers is to show a problem, a situation with issues, and to show a protagonist who comes in and fixes the situation. It’s a very common trend and with people being so connected with the movies, they start to a) undermine the situation at hand, b) to stop introspecting the issues and problems faced by people. A film based on an issue which is reality, has the responsibility of showcasing the complexities of things rather than pandering to the viewers.
In the film, the director of the film delves into the life of the people working within the forest department. On one hand, these are people that are very connected with the animals in the forest, hoping to not cause any disturbance to their lives. On another hand, they are also people who are stuck between a conundrum of people in the village wanting to stray to the forests to graze, and politicians commissioning big construction/ agriculture projects that are destroying natural habitats. The issues with the people increase, when the tigress T-12 kills a farmer, who has taken his goat for grazing. Apart from the issues from the people, they are also faced with the opposition party leader from the same area, who wants to showcase himself to be a man of the people who fights for their rights, with the local elections right around the corner.
Initially the forest department, holds the people off saying that they will capture the tigress and let her free, rather than the politicians' idea to kill her. However, after more deaths, the Forest Officer is unable to control the rising unrest growing within the village and is forced to get a hunter named Pintu, who boasts of a resume of killing more than 10 tigers. In his first introduction within the film, he tells Vidya, that he can look at the tiger’s eyes and identify if he/she is a man eater.
With the intervention of the politicians, the team is split into two with Pintu leading the hunter’s party and Vidya leading a group of forest officers. As they head deeper and deeper into the jungle, it becomes pretty clear to the officers that human intervention in most parts of the jungle have displaced the animals to a huge extent. As the tigress roams around, trying to find a safe place for herself and her two cubs, she is unable to pass a huge copper mine which has restricted the tigress from moving to the national park. In a dramatic scene in the film, Vijay Raaz launches into a monologue talking about how on one side there is a highway and on another side, there is the mine, leaving no choice for the animals but to venture back to the farmer grazing lands.
The film left me in deep thought. As I ventured online, to read more about what people were saying about the film, I could see that a lot of people shared the same viewpoints I did. For centuries now, mankind has taken over the earth, and treated it as their own. We construct highways, factories, and replenish the already existing forest cover, to build plantations and construct mines/ dams and what not. Human greed is the root of all these issues. Everyone has agendas, and at most times these agendas don’t seem to take into account all the parties involved.
As much as we are chasing development and making things easier for us in the long run, the ecosystem that has balanced itself all these years, is in the risk of getting ruined. Many scientists have put 2030 as the date, after which there will be no chance of a turnaround. As we continue to move forward, it is imperative that we develop in a sustainable and careful manner, so as to not disrupt the ecosystem that has sustained life on earth all these years. For this to happen, we must hold the people taking these decisions to a great deal of accountability.
