. . . . . . were actually pretty good. The rest, kind of a jumbled mess of story telling and different styles for no reason. The flash style Paley uses in the beginning is quite beautiful but ends far too soon. It would have made a great short. Which in reality is what this is. What follows is a jumbled mess of cartoon , cutout and substandard TV flash set to inappropriate 30's music. This is offset by the fact one person did the entire thing I know but films are not judged by the effort, they are judged by the result. The talent is there but the arrogant belief that talent or design can overcome the missing story is too. I am glad the cat and Sita in the end.

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.

The wonders of the internet! I came across this little masterpiece whilst checking out the Internet Archive. After watching about ten minutes of stuttered streaming I decided to download it. (Legally, since it's released under a creative commons licence). This is a remarkable piece of individual genius. A true labour of love with a dash of revenge thrown in. Great animation, great story interpretation, sexiest animated chicks since Jessica Rabbit (and with four arms, no less), funny, witty, poignant & hell, just bloody brilliant. I came to this film knowing a (very) little about this classic Indian story and apart from royally entertaining me, it also inspired me to learn more. The biographical excerpts which some others have found distracting I found to be an integral part of the film, without which it would have been (for me) a much less satisfying experience. See this film. Shalom!

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.