Sherni - A gentle beast!

Bharath Vijayakumar

In his earlier work Newton, Amit V. Masurkar had his protagonist go to a jungle for a day on election duty. In Sherni, he once again sets up his story in a jungle. Vidya Vincent (Vidya Balan) is the new DFO (Divisional Forest Officer) in a remote town. Sherni follows her brief stint as she tries to do her best in fulfilling her duties. Amit V. Masurkar isn't going for theatrics and keeps the emotional beats very real.

Vidhya Balan is terrific as the subdued Vidya Vincent. She has a lot going on inside her but hardly lets it out. It is one thing to put in an understated performance or be stoic but to put across your emotions while remaining so is something else. The performance is like a slow moving stream. You do not really realize that you are moving but at the end of the film you do realize the distance that you have traveled. The stellar supporting cast that includes names like Vijay Raaz is brilliant too.

Sherni is unhurried and Amit V. Masurkar takes time to show the intricate details associated with the work the forest officials have to do day in and day out. The film is not treated like a single conflict that reaches a crescendo in the climax but what we have are the constant obstacles on the path of a sincere government officer. The obstacles are not in the form of caricatured villains but very real problems that happen because of vested interests. Sometimes, it is not even about vested interests but officials compromising to please their higher ups. Vidya's mentor(in a way) Nangia (Neeraj Kabi) asks her to choose her battles. But who gets to decide which battle is important for whom? What could be one among many battles for someone could be the lone and most important battle for someone else.

Without spelling it out, we get to know a lot about the kind of family that Vidya has. She has had a love marriage (inter-linguistic and inter-religious). She probably met her husband (Pawan) at college. She doesn't carry her husband's name as her surname. None of this is stressed at any point in the film and we learn them through everyday conversations. This is precisely the kind of film Sherni is. It is not the kind of film where you explain the plot to your friend after watching it. It takes you to the scene of action and just lets you be amidst these very normal characters. Vidya doesn't like cats but when an abandoned cat needs shelter, she starts warming up to it. This nature of hers reflects in her job too. You can be rest assured that she will warm up to the new posting that she gets as a punishment in no time.

Bottomline:

As simple as it looks and feels, Sherni as a film possibly talks about a whole lot of things that is right and wrong with our society. It rarely takes a moral high ground and prefers to just hold a mirror. Just like the saying that goes 'Everything is Political', Sherni too is a political film. While the plot maybe about a forest officer trying to do her part in conserving wildlife, the movie is about a whole lot of other things as well. Isn't it ironical that the protagonist who is trying to save humans from wildlife actually ends up having to save the wildlife from humans. Sherni isn't that hard hitting kind of a film that is going to impact how you feel immediately but it could rather subconsciously leave a lasting impact on you. A gentle beast is the best way to define the film and Vidya Balan's performance.

Rating: 3.5/5