‘Sherni’ movie review: Vidya Balan leads Amit Masurkar’s restrained, formidable tale

The forest drama is a close-to-reality take on the man vs. animal conflict, helped immensely by the presence of Vidya Balan and Vijay Raaz

The man vs. animal conflict can be narrated in several ways. The deep, dark jungle can be romanticised and turned into a battlefield for a heroic tale of a saviour standing against the many stakeholders who threaten to tilt the balance of the fragile ecosystem. Or it can be viewed through a realistic lens that appears deceptively simple, like director Amit Masurkar does in Sherni. The title refers to a man-eating tigress on the prowl and also alludes to the divisional forest officer Vidya Vincent (Vidya Balan). She isn’t an archetypal screen heroine who roars her way out of murky waters, but is understated and determined to navigate the mundaneness of her government job to assert herself. . In Newton (2017), Masurkar showed his astute understanding of the social fabric, through an electoral officer’s attempts to facilitate polls in a troubled region. There, the play-off between hope and reality lent itself to a black comedy. He narrates Sherni like an insider who knows the workings of the administration rather well. Even the few comic moments stem from an insider’s perspective.