I got a chance to see the Sita Sings the Blues sneak preview in S.F. last Friday. My friend Nina Paley had flown down to screen it for a largely white indie film audience, with a handful of desis including DJ Drrrty Poonjabi.

The movie has changed tremendously back from when it was just a short with Annette Hanshaw tracks. It’s now made up of four different intercut segments, each with its own animation style:

• The Hanshaw musical interludes: highly stylized Flash
• Storyline: Beautiful, hand-painted scenes in Mughal miniature style with minimally-animated mouths and hands and a woman voicing Sita with gurh in her throat
• Discussion: The Mystery Science Theater 3000 talkback track with Balinese shadow puppets (Hanuman et al), with journie Aseem Chhabra, Loins director Manish Acharya and consultant Bhavana Nagulapally discussing the Ramayana through their fragmented yet erudite mythical memories; I couldn’t get enough of this segment, it was smart and hilarious!
• Personal: Nina’s breakup story, done in wiggly comic-strip style

The painstakingly-animated film, a work which began as self-therapy, took ‘three years of work spread over five years.’ Here’s what I loved about it:

• It’s an original, landmark interpretation of the Ramayana — it’s pop culture, not academic; a feminist revision, which the Sita myth has been ripe for; a beautiful visual style; like Amar Chitra Katha comics, a version which could popularize the myth with kids, whether in the desh or across the kaala pani
• It’s a testament to the breadth and quality of work that a single motivated artist can get done
• Surprisingly, the shadow puppet discussion is the most engaging of the four tracks, full of snark and humor; it critiques Sita’s passivity using Indian voices, which is politically canny; it showcases urbane, non-Apu Sellers Indian accents; the perforated shadow puppets are cruel and lovely; Nina animates the conversation even as people correct themselves on the fine points, which leads to hilarity as sprites pop in and out of existence

• Drawing a parallel between Sita and the animator’s own breakup makes the film intensely personal; the point of myths is to apply their lessons to real life; the usage here is more interesting than the cheap, trivial crucifixion poses used throughout Hollywood
• Nina references her short on overpopulation with an animated stork, and in one scene parallels Agni with Satan by painting him red and putting him on a goat

Here’s what I thought could be improved:

• The classic Hanshaw songs, so mesmerizing in short form, drag a bit when put end to end in a full-length feature
• The simple, brightly-colored Flash style which works in a small QuickTime window doesn’t feed the brain with visual texture on a big screen
• The Indian music and faux-Indic fonts which signify the Trivandrum segments are cartoony (but then, so is the New York segment, and it is an animation)
• The Malayalis in Trivandrum are merely background (though the mythical Indians are the focus of the entire film). Like much modern work on India, many are more interested in the myths than the nation today. This has improved drastically with the hunger for news on the economic boom.

Surprisingly, the questioners in the audience focused on repercussions from religious fundamentalists, wondering aloud how a revision of the Bible might have been received had that been the focus. But then we have Jesus Christ Superstar.

The film ends with the earth swallowing Sita like Persephone, like The Ground Beneath Her Feet’s Vina Apsara. It’s a powerful moment in a powerful film. Sita Sings the Blues is a must-see. Check it out when it makes the film fest rounds next year.

Bye, doll!

Related posts: Ars mechanica, Nina’s heavenly delights, ‘Sita Sings the Blues’