Sita Sings the Blues (2008)

Wow. Cool. After her difficult divorce, cartoonist and animator Nina Paley decided to make a movie in which her story is paralleled with the ancient Hindu tale of The Ramayana. The result is a funny and sad mash-up of her waning marriage, conversational analyzation of the Ramayana characters, and a large amount of jazzy musical numbers vocalized by Annette Hanshaw. Sita Sings the Blues begins with a gorgeous opening sequence set to thumping background music, combining imagery of space, water, various Hindu gods, mother earth, and other symbols. After that the film divides itself into three areas.

The least amount of time is devoted to Paley's personal life, animated in a fluctuating, scribbly style with photographic backgrounds. We see Paley move to India to follow her husband's office transfer, and his unexplained waning affection. When she visits New York for a business trip, he advises her not to come back. It is unclear whether he found someone else, or just stopped loving her.

Intermingled with her story is that of Sita, wife of Rama, as she dutifully follows her husband into 14-year exile. Rama is an incarnation of the god Vishnu, heir to the throne, and the epitome of virtue, goodness, and courage. In turn, Sita represents all the qualities of a pure and dedicated wife. When she is taken by the demon king Ravana, Rama and his monkey-man sidekick Hanuman stage an impressive rescue, burning his entire palace down. However, now that Sita has stayed in another man's home, Rama declares her unclean, though she never even let her kidnapper touch her. She passes through a fire test to display her purity, and the couple returns to the kingdom for Rama to finally be crowned, now that 14 years have passed. However his people, having heard of Sita's experience with Ravana, don't respect a king who will take back a woman from another man, and so Rama sends her back into exile. She bears his twin sons and raises them alone. Years later he finds them and decides to take his sons back to the kingdom, but continues to reject Sita, and so she calls out to be released from life, and is literally swallowed up by Mother Earth.

The animation here is choppy and flat, incorporating the accompanying illustrations of the original text (I think? I'm not actually sure where they came from, but definitely an ancient version of the book- like the images on the Wiki page. Sorry if I am just lying). Several scenes are chronicled by three adorable cut-paper silhouette figures, who have a very laid-back, conversational way of narrating. The detail is exquisite. Paley also plays around with the images here, mixing ancient representations of the characters with modern objects in a collage format.

The third area is within Sita's story, but separated by a shift in animation style. Here are the numerous Annette Hanshaw musical sequences, sung by the Sita character. They relate to her story, though often in generalized terms, and the animation therein often details further events of the story in comical ways, or examines her unwavering attachment to a man who mistreats her. Visually it is smooth and layered, with loose and exaggerated movements. The character designs are very over-the-top, with Sita a large-breasted, wide-hipped Betty Boop-type and Rama the muscular, top-heavy dolt. I imagine it's quite difficult to animate musical sequences, but Paley does an excellent job keeping everything to the beat of the songs as well as making the sequences interesting.

I really enjoyed this film. It's an engaging story that says a lot about culturally perceived women's roles in reference to their husbands, without making any blaringly obvious grand statements. It is satirical, but not bitingly so. The impossible and sexist standards set for women in both ancient and modern times are clearly compared. The animation is lovely, with great use of different materials and styles to really showcase what 2-D animation can do. Though not especially detailed in her designs, Paley shows practiced understanding of movement, form, and color. Knowing that she did all of the animation herself really floors me. My only critiques are that it dragged a bit, from having one or two many songs, and I thought there was too little attention paid to the modern couple. I had no grounding for their relationship, and wondered about the husband's reason for leaving his wife. Otherwise: excellent. And now you can watch it all for yourself online for FREE! Yay Internet!

4.5/5