Ishanou (1990) Indian regional cinema probes the mystery of faith

Standard screenwriting advice has it that nothing confuses an audience faster than unclear character motivations, but some of the most powerful stories succeed by refusing to do exactly that. We never learn what made Daniel Plainview so embittered, or why Iago hates Othello, and nobody worth listening to would say There Will Be Blood and Othello are diminished by that. To the number of artists brave enough to tell a story this way, we can add director Aribam Syam Sharma and writer M.K. Binodini Devi. Their enigmatic yet deeply impactful 1990 film Ishanou has just been restored by India’s Film Heritage Foundation and released on Blu-Ray by Second Run.

Sharma is a major name in the cinema of Manipur, a state in North-East India. According to Omar Ahmed’s booklet, his 1981 film Even Beyond the Summer Horizon – great title – broke Sholay’s record by staying in Indian cinemas for a staggering thirty-two consecutive weeks. British audiences have had fewer chances to see this kind of stuff; the Indian films we usually get are split unevenly between the mainstream Mumbai-based fare that Westerners call “Bollywood” and the occasional smaller film that’s been given some international film festival love (as was the case with Payal Kapadia’s recent Palme d’Or contender All We Imagine As Light). The least you can say about Sharma’s film, then, is that it fills in a vital gap in UK audiences’ film education.

Happily, there’s also a lot more to be said about it. Driven by a truly fantastic lead performance by Anoubam Kiranmala, Ishanou is the story of Tampha, a woman driven from her family by a sudden religious revelation. The fact that said revelation involves seeing a striking purple flower then running off to sing is both cinematic – ever since the advent of sound, the movies have always loved a musical number, and Indian movies more than most – and deeply strange. If Ishanou is in conversation with any classic of Indian cinema, it’s Satyajit Ray’s Devi, another surprisingly neorealist film about the mysteries of faith with a female lead. Yet Devi’s heroine was forced to accept her destiny by male relatives, whereas Tampha’s husband would rather his wife be a mother than a mystic.

Ishanou – the title translates to “the chosen one” – opens with text explaining the Maibi religious order that Tampha joins. It’s quite a straightforward, explanatory opening; you might not realise that it contains a subtle hint towards the film’s wrenching, tragic ending. But it’s important to know that this is a real faith. Were we watching a film about a woman renouncing her family in favour of a fictitious religious group, we might assume it was a horror movie about a destructive cult. Similarly, Kiranmala’s convulsions at the film’s mid-point, writhing and screaming for a ritual to start as her family splash cold water on her, suggest an Indian version of The Exorcist. Yet Sharma is going for something very different here. It’s pointless to boil such complex works down to something as simple as a “message”, but here goes: if Ray’s Devi was a skeptical film about religion made by someone mature enough to acknowledge its appeal, Ishanou is a film that respects belief while not sugar-coating the fact that it can be a very, very hard and lonely path, ending in the most devastating freeze-frame this side of The 400 Blows.

You might, ultimately, side with Tampha’s husband, not least because he’s played so well and sensitively by Kangabam Tomba. You might see Tampha’s actions less as a sudden discovery of true faith and more of a descent into madness, or at least think that such radical life changes should be based on something sturdier than a flower. But the mystery of Tampha’s actions keeps you watching nonetheless. This kind of ambiguous character motivation is often associated in the West with the existentialist and modernist literature of the 20th century, but despite the name of the latter movement it’s not a new thing. Hermann Hesse, the modernist author who dealt with this kind of character in his classic novels Siddhartha and Steppenwolf, was inspired by recognising this same theme, the yearning for a meaningful life, in Asian religions, folk tales and philosophy. Rather than being a new story, then, the age of the Indus Valley civilisations means it might actually be the oldest story in human history, and Ishanou brings it back home.

As noted above, Ishanou has been newly restored by the Film Heritage Foundation, under the guidance of sometime director Shivendra Singh Dungapur. (His documentaries Celluloid Man and Czechmate are also available on Second Run) It’s a cared-for transfer, with the daytime scenes sun-baked and colourful, and the night-time scenes – particularly the long, astonishing scene of Maibi ritual in the film’s final third – are wonderfully clear. Dungapur turns up in the extras talking to Tomba, and there is also a good interview with Sharma. What shines through is Sharma’s gratitude that his film has been brought back before audiences with such love, a sentiment that is echoed in his essay for the accompanying booklet. The booklet also contains Ahmed’s aforementioned helpful essay on the film and its place in Indian cinema, as well as an account of the restoration process from Dungapur.

Graham’s Archive – Ishanou (1990)