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Movie Review: Sherni
While playing a lady inspector in Mardani, Rani Mukherjee has acted like a typical hero style to deal with criminals; on the same lines, common viewers of Hindi cinema, including me, would definitely expect that Vidya Balan, being a lady forest officer in recently released movie Sherni on Amazon Prime Video, would act in a typical heroinism. However, there was some possibility of getting something different as director Amit Masurkar had made Newton earlier which is safely away from typical filmy stuff and to my pleasant surprise, this came in realty. He has handled the story ‘Sherni’ very sensitively treating it out of the box way.
Amit Masurkar had written the story of Newton while here Astha Tiku has shouldered this responsibility. We all are unfortunately reluctant about the deterioration of environment due to so called development and so film industry also rarely dare to take risk making films on this issue and that too in a non – filmy method! Bhushan Kumar, Krishna Kumar of T Series and Amit Masurkar have dared to take this risk and they must be appreciated and congregated for this effort.
You won’t find a single filmy frame in this 2 hour 10 minutes long movie. It is thoughtful movie for matured audience who really care about the environment. This you can take as a warning before watching the film.
A wise farmer in the movie says, “शेर है तो जंगल है .. जंगल है तो .. बारीश है .. बारीश है तो खेत है.. और खेत है तो हम है!” This is the summary message of the film that writer and director want to convey.
Vidya Vinslet is a newly recruit Dy. Forest Officer. She is very disciplined, principled, honest, strict and at the same time sensitive and mainly loving the nature. Soon after taking charge, she realizes that forest officers, employees and contractors have hands in gloves with mutual understanding and she could hardly ever do any good work.
In addition, the male dominated society always used to corner a lady officer and doubt her capabilities and method of working. Moreover, Vidya also comes to know the cordial relations of forest officers and politicians from opposite party. All these people have nothing to do about nature, environment, forest and the wild life and everyone is engaged in selfishly motivated objectives that makes Vidya depressed.
A tigress (Sherni) named T Twelve has became violent and dangerous for farmers, villagers, livestock in the vicinity of forest. Vidya and her colleagues take a mission of sending the tigress back in forest. They want to keep her alive and go back in her natural habitation. Simple story of the film shows the tigress succumbs to conspiracy of officers and politicians.
The story goes very slowly for first more than an hour as the introduction of characters and establishing story go on for pretty long time and this may discourage the viewer to go ahead. The forest officer played by Vidya doesn’t show any dramatic move or heroic action as writer and director have kept it all realistic till the end. In the last part there is some speed and drama as how the tigress dies and how Vidya starves to save her, but that too is not that much happening.
With down to earth and non – filmy realistic approach to the film, the director has not casted any celebrity actor except Vidya. The forest shooter Pintu played by Sharat Saxena could have been presented with some humor but the director has not done so. It is also can’t be understood as to why the conflict between Vidya and Pintu is not shown with some interesting and entertaining treatment?
Director is expected to rectify the faults in screenplay, at least in a commercial movie but Amit is failed here. The forest officer played by Vidya is not anymore challenging to a talented actress with great strength like her, on the other hand her capacity is under-utilized here. Vidya has easily portrayed the forest officer adjusting a lot at many levels.
Lyrics, music etc. don’t have any scope in the movie. The background used during jungle scenes is also not effective and attractive. Action, thriller are the special attractions in jungle stories, that too lack here making viewers depressed. However, cinematography by Rakesh Haridas is very effective. Light effects in every frame and the bird eye view shots in dense forest are unparalleled. The actors Vijay Raj, Brijendra Kabra, Neeraj Kabi have acted well.
Sherni is a movie like parallel cinema made with some good objectives and the message that writer and director want to give is really appreciable; however, there is nothing called entertainment which a common audience expects from any movie. Moreover, the filmy name Sherni also creates some expectation that doesn’t get fulfilled. Why Amit has not selected any non – filmy name like Newton, is unanswered.
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