Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

Overrated

Lack of good storyline.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

May be it's because I know the Ramayana thoroughly and have been through so many discussions about different aspects of it, problems in it (Every single thing in the film including those jokes), I felt bored watching this film. Another reason may be the different animation techniques used, which I've only seen in low-quality films or ancient illustrations. I do appreciate the effort by the director who worked on every aspect of the film, that in itself is a great achievement but the thing is you can tell it by watching the film.

Sita Sings The Blues" RIVER TO RIVER, FLORENCE 2010 – PARTING SHOTS A BLUESY RAMAYANA CLOSES FEST by Iskandar SinhaSita Sings the Blues To start with last things first, this highly varied Florence Indian film week came to a rousing close on December 11, 2010, with a brilliant feature length animation entitled "Sita Sings The Blues". SITA is the heroine of the Indian national epic known as the Ramayana, a tale close to the heart of every Indian person. In the story she follows her husband Prince Rama into exile in a forest where she is kidnapped by the evil king Ravana of (Sri) Lanka. While remaining faithful to her husband, Sita is subjected to a variety of temptations... Director Nina Paley is an American animator who was inspired by a reading of the Ramayana in 2002. In this hilarious semi-modern adaptation of the classic Indian epic Sita looks like a Sanskritic Betty Boop, and does indeed sing the blues at various stages of this rip-roaring 82 minute piece of work. In the film filmmaker Nina finds herself in a similar situation when her husband who is in India on business decides to break up their marriage via e-mail. Shadow puppets narrate both the ancient Indian tragedy and the modern Western comedy which are intertwined, all with musical numbers choreographed to 1920 Jazz standards. The visuals are a juicy blend of Walt Disney and classic Indian imagery and the result is a totally enjoyable flick that I hope will be seen widely for the sheer joy it radiates. PS: All the songs are by twenties American blues singer Annette Hanshaw,

This wonderfully ambitious and ingenious cartoon is full of interesting ideas and various animation styles. But it never fully clicked with me, and I'm afraid it's because it's a too too ambitious and ingenious. The movie tells parallel stories, one an ancient Indian legend of Rama and his wife Sita, the other of the animator's relationship. The latter is very simple, a series of short scenes down in a scrawled style of animation. But Sita's story is another thing entirely. The story is narrated by three Indian friends of the animator who tell the story from memory, often disagreeing about what happened and editorializing over the story. The are very entertaining, and animated with traditional Indian art.The stories they describe are then illustrated in a different animated style that is the least memorable of the movie (although not bad).Then the most significant part of the story is recounted, using a beautiful, lush style of animation, through the use of a song. The songs are sung by some old-time torch singer and are very good.There are also a couple of times when the animation does some weird psychedelic stuff, which didn't seem to match anything else in the movie.While the exploration of whether men deserve the sort of unconditional love is interesting, and much of this is amusing, there is a certain unsettled quality to it. It is as though the director had a lot of ideas and wanted to do them all right now in case she never got together the money to do another movie. I'm not saying what she did was wrong, and I certainly understand why some people really love this movie, but for me it was just not as good as the movie I was expecting based on the opening sequence.

Nina Paley is the kind of filmmaker that makes the auteur theory look dated. This isn't a case of a director putting her vision on the screen via a crew of technicians and a cast of actors. This IS her vision, down to all of the designs and animation, which she did over the course of five years (a dedication of time that recalls a director like David Lynch on Eraserhead or Inland Empire). It was all done on computer- reportedly only one intern helped animate some of a battle sequence- and it's being presented for free on the website for Sita Sings the Blues. And yet, if you have a chance (as I had) to see it on the big screen, it's one of the events of the year if you love animation and daring in film-making.It's a personal story of Paley's break-up with her boyfriend (who did it, savagely, over email), and put into a context of the story of the Ramayana, an ancient Indian story about a woman, Sita, and her bond with the blue-skinned Rama over a lifetime. At the same time Paley uses animation and music and documentary and the free-wheeling expression of cinema to make it unconventional. We see Indian drawing figures ala Monty Python animation discussing story points as they go along, which name is who's and what detail really happened, etc. And then there are musical segments put to Annette Hanshaw, a 1920's jazz singer, to illustrate Sita's journey through the turbulent ups and downs of romance.Sita Sings the Blues is joyous entertainment. One can tell that Paley was exorcising some past strife, namely from her own break-up that we see in the film in a scraggly Dr. Katz style of animation, but what's most striking is how it's tragedy is never ever a downer. On the contrary this is a comedy in a fresh sense, where the absurdity keeps coming in little unexpected ways, like with the figures of the monkeys in battle, or how the discussing members talk over the details of the Sita cast members. And the musical numbers are just about the best one has seen all decade (which goes without saying the lack of competition, but still), as we see Sita sing her feelings and thoughts, sometimes in happiness and sometimes totally down in the dumps (re: her pregnancy and abandonment after being rescued).There's a complex web of emotions that Paley navigates through, and she does it so confidently that it's hard not to marvel at her achievements here. It's an independent film in the best sense of the word, the truest sense, uncompromised by studio interference or for any kind of 'demographic'. It's a dark comic feminist musical fable that includes an intermission, a cast of hundreds (animated, not voiced), and it strikes up your heartstrings in the best possible ways. It's a post-modern breakthrough, and I can't wait to revisit it, oh, right about now I would say.