Tiger 24 (2022) Film Review
Warren Pereira’s outstanding documentary Tiger 24 allows for very uncomfortable questions to be asked. Without disregarding the ecological aspect of the production itself, the director lends a hand to his subjects and yes, opens the window to the other side. Tigers aren’t necessarily killing machines, but they have the capacity and that’s a very important discussion.
Perhaps, it’s the selling point of a film that’s organically embedded in a collective mind that holds an agenda based on animal care. Today, it’s what we are and how we think. In the documentary, there are glimpses of a past where killing deserved a trophy. That’s long forgotten now.
Today, the challenge is another, but in a primal sense there are still shades of that awful consideration of a beautiful kingdom. One that we’ve insanely invaded in civilization. Upon a horrible tragedy, a town and a country clash at the center of animal activism gone haywire. A filmmaker asks the right people and begins peeling away. The story is one that goes beyond an accident but never surpasses the boundary of speculation.
Tiger 24 is a brutal exploration of facts. It is never exploitative, yet it has a true crime feel that’s not very common when dealing with these subjects. Pereira goes deep in the jungle to understand animal behavior and encounters different shades of tradition that go from survival to the religious. Animal conservation is a huge deal in India. And tigers are beyond this. They are sacred.
However, there’s one that managed to attack and mutilate a man. When Pereira investigates (always with a camera at hand), he comes across more cases. This information adds fuel to a social kind of fire where multiple sides defend their perspective. The tiger has been transported to a zoo and the wild is a thing of the past. Surrounded by walls, the tiger walks back and forth seeking refuge in a whole man made scheme that seems impossible to understand.
Again, it’s also horrific when facts are revealed. The details of the massacre are only applicable in Pereira’s grounded take on animal activism. Even if the acts are that of monsters, it’s impossible to see this beautiful animal as a victim of something bigger. One particular scene of men jumping walls is a great representation of that bigger picture. The one we have to look at when starting to judge some of the comments given in Tiger 24.
With a beautiful and haunting score, the film conveys a sense of wonder and mystery, while observing the realistic and lethal. This is not a pretty picture of our relationship with animals. It’s the beginning of a conversation we need to have in modern society about how we can coexist with creatures that don’t have the ability to adapt as we do. And if we can’t see that, where does that drop us in the unsettling question of: if “who should be on the verge of extinction?”
Pereira’s long mission for over a decade is admirable and it has spawned into a fascinating film that isn’t easy to forget. If that’s what we wanted, then he did a very good job with this one.
Please be aware: it’s a very graphic film.
