Sita sings the blues

Fig .1. poster

"Sita Sings The Blues" directed by Nina Paley was a pleasant surprise, in the fact that most of the film was made by Nina alone. As a full feature length film this was quite impressive, the change of art styles was very welcome as a nice way to change the scene and set the tone.

The musical choice that Nina made where perfect for the film, whenever Annette Hanshaw's musical numbers played with alway played some deeper meaning in explaining how Sita felt. Annette's singing is a more interesting way to tell a viewer what's is happening, it  also helps that the music is quite catchy. The film is original joining many separate elements and making them work together to tell two stories that eventually become one story. The parallels between Nina's real life story and Sita's are a welcome form a story telling.


Nina's story is about her long time boyfriend, Dave moving to India and eventually breaking her heart. Sita's story is one of suspicion of her chastity, her husband Rama does no believe that she has been faithful, she is eventually set alight in a sort of trail by fire (which ended up testing her purity). Rama still didn't believe her so she cried out to prove her innocence and was taken by the earth. Nina and Sita both end with excepting the their situations and become independent.

Watching the film with no previous knowledge of the Ramayana it felt like being taught lesson but in a interactive and immersive way. The use of indecisive narrators was a nice way to tell the story. Listening to it felt like hearing a story from an old relatives. The animation can be described as versatile constantly changing and keeping the film fresh and fun.

figure 1 poster: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/81eAhRldMCL._SL1500_.jpg (accessed 28/02/2016)