Sherni is an Indian environmental drama film directed by Amit V. Masurkar. The film is distributed by Amazon Prime Video, which was just released last week. The film stars Vidya Balan, Sharat Saxena, Vijay Raaz, Brijendra Kala, and Neeraj Kabi. Fiction films that openly raise the theme of conservation of nature reserves and animals are indeed rare. Sherni is an example of a movie that is simple, brilliant, and inspiring.
Vidya (Balan) is an official recently appointed by the Ministry of Forestry to head a conservation forest area in India. Not yet had time to fully adapt, Vidya has faced a severe case, namely a tigress that terrorized residents to death. The hotly contested regional head election further complicates the situation. One candidate took advantage of this situation to win over the residents by asking for the help of professional hunters. Vidya must race against time with the hunter who intends to shoot the tiger.
I think Sherni is the best forest and animal conservation film I’ve ever watched. This film is brilliant to use the medium of “angry tiger” as an analogy of all the problems. We all know that the problem is the humans and not the forest dwellers. Forests are their habitat which is increasingly being eliminated due to human activities. Almost all environmental issues are in the story, such as rogue environmental contractors, environmental policies that are not well-targeted, mining areas that are increasingly reducing forest area, weak citizen education, to lazy and corrupt officials. Complete. In just this one moment of hunting, everything was represented. Vidya’s figure who adheres to her ideological principles becomes a balancer and moral compass for the audience.
Such a “complex” story is also strongly supported by its unique aesthetic approach. In some moments, the film is like a documentary that tells us a lot about forests and animals. Honestly, I got to know more about tigers after watching this movie. Another thing I underlined is editing. I laughed, amused, when several times, close-up images of animals were cut with human portraits; of course, the motifs were symbolic, as did the soviet montage filmmakers. This comparison gets even crazier when a charming montage segment presents the action of tiger hunting, candidates who are campaigning, to issues that have grown into a national uproar. The lyrics of the song make us laugh because they compare all of them with animals.
With all the simplicity, local style, and clever concept, Sherni packs the theme of conserving nature reserves and animals without overly patronizing the audience. The closeness to culture also makes the story feel familiar to us, for example, the tradition of residents to refuse reinforcements to economic problems, which are the most significant issues so that the sweet words of potential leaders easily lull them. Unfortunately, this film does not have an ideal solution. The ending concludes brilliantly and touchingly with a series of animal images in one place I don’t need to mention where. It’s ironic if our children and grandchildren will only be able to see it there—a question for all of us. Like the angry tiger, it could be that this heating-up pandemic is the work of us who ourselves ignore nature and each other.