Mini-Review: Sita Sings the Blues

I don’t believe I’ve ever seen a movie stranger than “Sita Sings the Blues.” I could try to describe the plot, but you probably wouldn’t believe me. If I told you what it was about, you’d walk off shaking your head and thinking that I’d gone crazier than usual.

What’s it all about? Damned if I know. I just watched the thing last week, and I’m still trying to piece it together. To squash it down into a single sentence, “Sita Sings the Blues” is a retelling of the Ramayana. The Ramayana, for those of you not up on your ancient Hindu epics, tells the story of Rama and his lovely wife Sita. It’s your usual boy meets girl/boy loses girl to ten-headed demon king/boy and his half-human/half-monkey ally get girl back.

But wait—there’s more! A lot more. The Ramayana retelling is only one part of the multicultural mishmash. These (relatively) straightforward sections are intercut with musical numbers, in which an animated Sita lip-synchs to the songs of 1920s chanteuse Annette Henshaw. Even these interludes have interludes. They’re broken up by autobiographical scenes from the life of “Sita’s” creator, Nina Paley, relating her crash-and-burn relationship with her ex-husband.

It’s wildly diverse, all right. But is it any good? Eclecticism for eclecticism’s sake isn’t necessarily a good thing. And if the elements don’t hang together well, it can get ugly in a hurry. Take the example of last year’s “Across the Universe.” It gave us a heady brew of hippie utopianism, 1960s nostalgia, and trippy psychedelia bolted together on a foundation of Beatles tunes. It’s was strange, it was crazy, it…didn’t work. At all.

“Sita” works, in a strange, bizarre, off-the-wall kind of way. It’s almost dreamlike—specifically, the sort of dream a Religious Studies major might have after a meal of bad curry. Nothing in the movie should fit together, and that’s why it does. It’s like mixing chocolate and bacon. The unexpected contrast gives it a special kick.

One second we’re in San Francisco, and Paley’s animated avatar says goodbye to her husband while he packs for a trip to India. Whoosh! Suddenly we’re in Sri Lanka and Sita is being held captive by the ten-headed demon King Ravana. Whoosh! Now we’re watching Rama single-handedly slaughter an army of demons while Sita warbles a crackly jazz age torch song. Whoosh! We’re in New York, and Nina has just gotten an e-mail from her husband saying he never wants to see her again. My advice: be sure to buckle your seatbelt, cause these changes might give you whiplash.

“Sita” doesn’t even look like a single film. Every storyline has its own style of animation, as different from one another as is Kurma from Varaha—sorry, little Hindu inside joke. The traditional telling of the Ramayana unfolds through a series of semi-static religious paintings, with commentary provided by a trio of chatty shadow puppets. The Paley scenes are done in “SquiggleVision”—yes, that’s a real term—making them look as if they had been done by an jittery caffeine feind.

The musical numbers receive the most stunning treatment. According to Wikipedia, which I trust unconditionally, they’re animated in the “vector” style. For the viewer, this means everything looks like a high-quality Saturday morning cartoon. Sita sports big hips and big eyes in the Betty Boop Mold. Ravana is green, scaly, and looks uncannily like Snidely Whiplash. The whole thing reminded me a bit of those Homestar Runner cartoons I used to love so much.

Naturally, when you divide up your movie like this, some parts will be weaker than others. It’s an unavoidable fact. Whenever you read a book with multiple plot lines, one of them is going to grip your more than the rest. The author’s job is to make the other plots interesting enough so you don’t dash right through them on the way to the other side.

In “Sita Sings the Blues,” I’d have to say the weak link is the whole “singing the blues part.” It looks pretty, but so did the queen from Snow White, and look what a…witch she turned out to be. The problem: most of the songs bear only a tangential relation to what’s happening on screen. So while Sita’s belting out a number about her man knocking on her door, the movie shows an army of monkeys battling it out with a horde of goblins. Slightly disconcerting.

It’s to Paley’s credit, though, that all three parts are pretty engaging. Not engrossing, mind you, but engaging enough to keep me from snoozing the way I usually do while watching Hindu epics on film. And if you don’t like one part, just wait a couple minutes—each segment lasts five minutes, tops. Something you like will be coming around the corner momentarily.

“Sita Sings the Blues” looks strange, sounds strange, and is strange. If you like your movies straightforward and conventional, “Sita” probably isnt’ for you. But if you’ve been waiting for years to see an animated version of the Ramayana, complete with 1920s jazz songs, it should be right up your alley.