Too Small to Matter : #15

What was the starting point for ‘Sherni’?

Sherni is about a tigress that is losing her habitat due to human intervention. She has come to the fringes of the jungle, where she encounters human beings. This is the starting point of the film.

Vidya Balan plays a forest officer, an experienced but gentle and empathetic person who is trying to bring change, but is not being allowed to do so. She’s also absorbed in her personal life and feels like she is not being taken seriously. She’s thinking of quitting her profession when this incident happens. That’s when she starts taking a deeper interest and realises that conservation is anthropocentric. It cannot be removed from humans, and human beings need to be actively involved. The tiger is the symbol for preserving nature and the wild.

Why focus on a tigress?

Basically, this is a story about conservation and the need for it. It’s a topic that is the need of the hour. The tiger is a flagship species for conservation in the sense that if you protect the tiger, you end up protecting the ecosystem that the tiger lives in. You protect bugs, bees, butterflies, the animals the tiger feeds on. This is why we focused on the tiger.

Writer Aastha Tiku’s thought was that in order to bring about positive long-term change, a whole lot of people need to make a whole lot of effort. Man is not separate from nature. From a young age, we are taught that it’s man versus nature; that we are different from animals, plants and insects—but we are all part of nature and if one gets affected, we all get affected. It’s a chain.

How did you shoot the animal scenes?

The tigers and some other animals are all visual effects (VFX). It would have been much cheaper to go to Thailand and shoot with real tigers but that was not the message we wanted to send out. We didn’t want to shoot with animals that were captive and exploit them.

Source.

What was your approach in directing Vidya Balan?

Vidya’s character is a forest officer who is jaded and disillusioned with what she is doing. So we wanted her not to be the Vidya she is in, say, some other films of hers–exuberant or lively. It was written like that. We didn’t want her to have a saviour complex. We just wanted her to have empathy for what she does. We didn’t want her to be nice for the sake of being nice, or polite for the sake of being polite, but somebody who does her job, somebody who has her own problems in her life, but somebody who listens, learns, collaborates

“she also has this belief that one person cant save this entire community and you need to empower and if you are in a position of power, you have to make sure that you distribute it. you make sure that it is a community effort and that the effort is sustained .. and not there for a short period of time. she sets up these systems because it is something that she believes in …. compared to what one may expect from a “hero” which is very “alpha” she is somebody who is soft natured … she is got a very strong will, but she is gentle she is humble …. she has got all those qualities that we really need in people who are in positions of power. and who can make change.

In Sherni, Vijay Raaz’s character Noorani is an expert in moths; he is a small–scale scientist in his ownesoteric way. The Head of the Forest department, Bansal (played by Brijendra Kala) is a connoisseur of shers. What is the idea behind such characters? 

Through Noorani’s character we wanted to show that one needs to have a holistic approach to conservation. In Noorani’s house there’s a picture of Salim Ali (famous Indian ornithologist) right behind him. But he is a moth expert (although some people think he is a butterfly expert) who is talking about tigers. It’s all linked. Noorani is a “systems thinker.” He understands the interconnections between these sciences and the politics and he understands the interconnections between the people. We met a few of people like that. They are not obsessed with publishing papers; they are truly sage-like in the way they go about their work. They are really passionate about what they do, and they approach it with deep love and sincerity.

Once you start getting deeper into conservation, man–animal conflict is one of the first things you learnabout. It’s a complex issue. Was the idea of the film to capture this complexity?

We didn’t just want to capture the complexity but we also wanted to give a solution, that conservation can’t be hero-driven. Vidya Vincent’s character neither saves the tiger nor she finds the cubs—they are found by the locals, the forest friends. Conservation is a community driven process. It requires time and effort from a whole lot of people. 

Is there something else about the film you want to talk about?

The music was a tough thing to crack. For the song, “Bandar Baat”, composed by Bandish Projekt, lyricist Hussain Haidry has used the tale of Billi and Bandar from Panchatantra. But for the background score we were very clear that we didn’t want it to sound like a “jungle film” with peculiar percussions and drone-like instrumentation through which cinema has exoticised the jungle. If you notice we have not tried to look at the jungle as a mysterious, dark, dangerous place. We have looked at it as something open, accepting, warm. That is the philosophy with which we approached it visually as well.

Source : FilmCompanion