Sita Sings the Blues

An enormously enjoyable animated film, Nina Paley's Sita Sings the Blues offers two parallel stories—one a retelling of The Ramayana, the Hindu epic in which Sita, the faithful wife of the hero, Prince Rama, is banished on suspicion of impurity; and the other chronicling Paley's own fractured marriage, which includes being dumped by her husband (by e-mail) after he heads off to India for a job. The mistreatment of women is the obvious thread between the ancient and modern tales, but Paley uses different approaches to each. The story of Sita is told through the conversation of three Indonesian shadow puppets, who argue over the details, and through songs from the 1920s put into the princess' mouth as commentary on the plot's twists and turns. The tunes are not newly recorded, but hail from vintage 78s featuring Annette Hanshaw, a jazzy pop singer of the period (the film has become something of a cause célèbre due to its use of copyrighted musical material, which prevented commercial distribution in the U.S., although it could be streamed online and was broadcast on PBS). The result is an endlessly inventive delight, in which various styles of animation are employed for each of the three intertwined sections—the Sita segments, the puppet narrators' quibbling, and the modern Paley story—backed by music that provides wittily feminist commentary on the related themes. Highly recommended. [Note: DVD extras include audio commentary by director Nina Paley, an interview with Paley, and her amusing short film “Fetch.” Bottom line: a solid extras package for a winning film.] (F. Swietek)