Sherni | Bollywood Movie Review by Movie Insert | Vidya Balan | MOVIE INSERT

  

A few years ago, in an interview, director Anubhav Sinha explained to methe concept of cheese in a movie. He said: In those stories that canalternatively be made as very dry films, I put some cheese in it. Cheese is the shot of Ayushmann Khurrana heroicallycarrying the rescued girl in his arms in Article 15 or Ashutosh Rana’s thunderousdialogue-baazi in Mulk. I interpret 'cheese' as that sprinkling of somethingextra that gives a movie its throbbing pulse. And I wish that Sherni had more cheese in it. Sherni is director Amit Masurkar’sfollow up to his brilliant Newton. Newton was set in the forests of Chhattisgarh. Sherni is set in the jungles of Madhya Pradesh. Like in Newton, here also, the protagonistVidya Vincent is a government officer, trying to do the right thingin a rotten system. Early in that film, Newton tells his superior:I want to make a difference, sir. He has, what his superior describes so memorablyas, ‘imaandari pe ghamand.’ But Newton is a newbie. After nine years of service, Vidya has lostthat flush of idealism. She's an efficient and reserved forest officerwho holds her own in a boys’ club. For entertainment, her superiors – all men– get drunk around a bonfire and sing Bollywood item numbers. She eats dinner alone, witha mewling kitten for company. Sherni is about a man-eating tigerbut the villains in the story are people – local politicians who makethe tiger an election issue; a hunter named Pintu Bhaiyaplayed nicely by Sharat Saxena, whose masculinity and pride rests onthe number of animals he has killed; forest officers who have littleinterest in protecting wildlife; and greedy corporations who strip the junglesand rob animals of their natural terrain.  The battle between development and environmentplays out with devastating results – in the short term, for animalsbut in the long term, for humanity. Amit has an astute sense ofthe workings of government machinery – the low-level corruption and cronyism, the mediocrity and indifference marinatingin every nook and crevice of the system, and the lethargy that a sarkari naukri breeds – early in the film,Vidya’s husband Pawan tells her that she's lucky to have a job that is recession proofand has benefits and security. Apne kaam se kaam rakho, he says,bas apni salary lo aur ghar chalo. Later, in one of the best scenes in the film,Vidya’s boss, Bansal is running through the office to escape the wrath of a locallegislator who has arrived with his boys to rough him up for not taking actionagainst that tiger on a rampage. It’s political posturing and Bansal is scurryingin and out of rooms to avoid a thrashing. At one point, he hides in a room in whichthese files covered in cobwebs are piled from floor to ceiling. That one visual captures the state of our nation. Sherni has almost entirely been shot on location. Amit, DOP Rakesh Haridas and sound designerAnish John immerse us into the textures of the terrain – the sounds and sights of a rich, majestic world teeming with life that we can’tsee and barely understand. The visuals of insects and animalsas transitions between scenes reminded me of the Malayalam film Kala. The beautiful night sequences in which flashlightsand headlights dance in the darkness echo Lijo Jose Pellissery’s Jallikattu. The sherni’s journey runs parallel to Vidya’s – both are negotiating a landscapemade hostile by men. The most memorable among these is Bansal,played superbly by Brijendra Kala. Bansal is, to borrow the popular phrase fromThe Family Man season 2, “a minimum guy.” He sits in front of thislarge photograph of a tiger but he has little interestin anything except himself. Brijendra plays him with exactly the rightmix of oiliness and cowardice. Sherni has many stellar actors includingVijay Raaz, Neeraj Kabi and Ila Arun but the film is grounded by the gravitas and understatedstrength that Vidya Balan brings to Vidya Vincent. The actor lets go of her natural exuberanceand works with restrained expressions. She's controlled and terrific. You sense that underneath Vidya’s stoicexterior is a well of fury and frustration. Which never quite explodes. Which brings me back to the cheese. Sherni has been written by Aastha Tiku with dialogues by Amit and Yashasvi Mishra. The film adheres to a documentary aestheticwith handheld camerawork, natural settings and meticulously researched details of theworkings of the forest department – an unusual subject for Hindi cinema. But in stretches, the sparenessunderwhelms the storytelling. The screenplay becomes inert. In Newton, Amit was ableto weave in dark humor but here, he doesn’t make enough room for it. Though there is one delicious moment in which Vidya and Hassan, the Vijay Raaz character,subvert Bansal mischievously. But Vidya remains emotionally opaque. I didn’t get enough of a sense of her, which is Sherni doesn’t sliceas sharply as Newton did. How did a woman like Vidya marrya personality-free man like Pawan? It’s a North-South love marriageand in one scene, Vidya says that she's nothing like she waswhen they were together in college. But we don’t know how this distance between them is affecting her. His friends call her Lady Tarzanand she smiles warily, hiding her irritation. Like she does when her mother-in-law asksher to wear jewellery for a dinner outing. Perhaps less isn’t always more. But despite stretches thatfeel repetitive and even dull, Amit steers the story to a codathat is chilling in its quietness. The end visuals work asa warning and an indictment. This is the world that we have constructedand we should be afraid. You can watch Sherni on Amazon Prime Video.