Director Amit Masurkar, of Sherni fame, believes we are interested in little details of human behavior

Nonika Singh

Post the critical acclaim of Sherni(streaming on Amazon Prime), you would expect its talented director Amit Masurkar to be roaring like a tiger. Only the maker is as reticent about his success as his movies are; restrained yet speaking firmly and with clarity of purpose and intent. Certainly, he is in a happy space as he was when his earlier film, Newton, became India’s official entry to the Oscars. But back then or now, beyond accolades it’s the journey, the process of filmmaking that matters to him.

En route that journey he likes to be in the company of actors/technicians, who apart from being good in what they do are also attuned to the philosophy of his film. And if his films seem as authentic as possible, much of the credit also goes to his team. Had the writer Aastha Tiku not delved deeply while writing it, the production designer Devika Dave not worked on the props at pre-production stage and director of photography Rakesh Haridas not done his homework on how to shoot in the jungle sans artificial light, Sherni would not have been the tigress worth rooting for.

Deep thought

Actors too are important as hell for ultimately it is they who are seen on screen and carry your message forward. While in a layered narrative like Sherni, messages are very many and the beauty of the film is that once it is out there, “people interpret it according to the cultural symbols they are familiar with.” But, yes, one message he would like the viewers to take home is, “Conservation is not hero-driven, but people or community centric.”

His heroes or heroines interestingly and tellingly, are not heroic characters but regular men and women Indian cinema is not quite used to portraying. He nods, “Yes when I look around I don’t’ see hero ‘heroes’ only more of Vidya Vincents and Newton Kumars.” Though he proclaims that he doesn’t really have a thing for forests, and it’s just a coincidence that both Newton and Sherni are set in forests. Of course in Sherni, “Forest is an important character in the film as are dialogues like; You may see a tiger once if you’ve been to the jungle 100 times, but be assured that the tiger would have seen you 99 times.” With dialogues co-written by Amit himself, however, if you think brevity is the soul of his cinema he doesn’t do it by conscious design, “Some of the brevity comes in at the editing stage, in this case through the perceptive eyes of the editor, Dipika Kalra.”

But yes small details like the way Pankaj Tripathi’s character takes off his sunglasses in Newton, the choreographed manner in which people drink tea in Sherni, Vidya Balan communicating through a stoic stare; some of it could be deliberate. He says, “We are all interested in little details of human behaviour.” But whether Sherni is more of an attitude, as one of his actors Neeraj Kabi says, he won’t qualify or even comment. All he would say is, “Kabi is not only an amazing actor but most sought after acting teacher too. A lot of how I deal with actors, I have learnt from his workshops. He doesn’t look at characters as black or white. Rather he understands its various shades.”

Mythical audience

On whether his cinema is more suited for OTT or cinema halls, where Newton found an accepting audience, he says, “It is suited for both. We take too much effort in determining who the audience is and are constantly aiming at a mythical audience (to please) which no-one really knows much about or what it wants.”

He may have dropped out of the engineering college to be a filmmaker simply because, ‘I was bored’, yet today he knows how to entertain and engage us with quality content. Next on his plate is a web series, which he deems will neither be toeing the prevalent trend of thrillers nor be slow burn like his films. Audience might be farthest away from his mind while making films, but he knows for sure all they want is something different. Steadfast in his belief, “I don’t want to muddle my communication,” you and me might have been confused whether Sherni is the right word for tigress he had no doubts about its meaning. To get it all right appears to be not only his wont, but also his mission.