Sita Sings the Blues, is a film that carries deep emotions carefully wrapped in humour and imagination. It’s visually delightful and highly original. This 2D animation film of about 70 minutes, combines four different styles of narration and ties them together with a common thread.
Sita Sings the Blues has Valmiki’s Ramayana running parallel to the modern biographical story of the film maker, Nina Paley. The epic is narrated from Sita’s perspective with a fair share of feminism. It’s a simple story made stunning by unusual storytelling, delightful visuals and a captivating script, that is both funny and irreverent. It combines the ancient and the modern without any obvious effort. There is Nina’s story set in San Fransico running parallel with Sita’s story set in Ayodhya, there are shadow puppets that have an ancient frame but use modern script, there is Sita singing blues in the forest of Lanka and yet to the story teller’s credit, these disparities appear natural.
Nina uses paintings to show episodes from the Ramayana, narration with the help of Indian shadow puppets that helps put scenes into context and adds immense humour to the script, seamless musical interjections where Sita uses music to convey her emotions and loneliness and a contemporary modern story.
It might not be easy to find a DVD of this movie, but you can visit sitasingstheblues.com, download a copy legally as it's a creative common film, buy movie merchandise or even make a donation if you want to.
It’s art. It’s brilliant story telling. It’s a burst of new thoughts. You must not miss this one.
Rating: 8/10
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