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Film Review: Sita Sings the Blues

Sita Sings the Blues
Dir. Nina Paley

In an age where religion is largely moribund, it’s a surprise and delight for me, a sceptic agnostic, to enjoy a film full of zealous religious mysticism with such great force.

Growing up in an Indian family of wavering conviction to Hinduism, the ancient Sanskrit epic, The Ramayana, was familiar to me. Very confusing – but familiar nevertheless. So when I read of Sita Sings the Blues, and its attempt to retell the story of Ram and Sita as a 2D animation, it immediately caught my interest and had me scrambling to find a copy. After quickly discovering it had never been distributed, my levels of intrigue grew even higher. Why, I thought, had a film that gained gushing reviews from influential critics such as Roger Ebert not managed to find distribution. There are, it turns out, two fairly obvious reasons: With unwitting artistic gusto, director Nina Paley decided to use old jazz recordings of Annette Hawthorn as part of the story, with Sita crooning Hawthorn’s words. Unfortunately, The flipside of this beautifully executed idea meant that any distributor would have to expensively buy the rights to the copyrighted songs, with the hope of recouping the money down the line. The problem with this is that there really isn’t much pull for a 2D animation of an ancient Sanskrit epic, regardless of how perfect a creation it might be.

But don’t worry. It’s not all doom and gloom. This means that you can download the film for free from Paley’s website! Free! I know, I know, most films can be downloaded free (illegally) these days, but at least you can do this knowing you have the directors’ blessing.

Right, enough prologues; to the film.

For those unfamiliar with Indian culture and its literary traditions, like myself, understanding the finer details of the story of The Ramayana can be frustratingly mystifying. With that said, here’s my crude and plagiarised (thanks Wikipidia) explanation: “The Ramayana tells the story of Rama (an incarnation of the Hindu preserver-god Vishnu), whose wife Sita is abducted by the demon king of Lanka, Ravana”. This, of course, only tickles the surface of the tale’s belly. Throw in an army on monkey-men, some multi-headed gods and a couple of trials by fire and your getting closer.

Understanding these complexions, Paley has the story narrated by three silhouetted shadow puppets, who bicker, in humorous Indian-inflected English, over the interminable contradictions of the story. Paley isn’t afraid to respectfully mock all the complexions and inconsistencies, and even offers a playful feminine critique of the mistreatment of Sita.

The film boasts an explosive colour palette unsuitable for epileptics, and carries a highly charged psychedelic intensity filling every frame. As Hawthorn’s recordings, mimed by Sita, filter into the story, Paley’s flat 2D animation go through a vivacious and voluptuous transformation, with Sita’s bust extending as her hips shrink and Rama looking as if he’s been on the Schwarzenegger training regime. These physical aberrations allow the characters to sit comfortably in the psychedelic, jazz inflicted, symmetrically intricate songs of Hawthorn.

It’s hard to imagine at what point Paley made the connection between the delicate recordings of Hawthorn and the story of The Ramayana. The songs blend seamlessly into the story and move the narrative along without obstruction.

In Paley’s delicately woven cultural tapestry there is room for all creative mediums. She flitters between using computer-animated imagery, vector graphics, hand drawn imagery and watercolours. The narrative ark is interrupted by counter stories, film intermissions (in Bollywood tradition) and extended trips of psychedelia. Paley respects our intelligence by not offering clear explanations and allowing us to make our own connections between the various threads.


Unfortunately, the films’ interspersing side story is much more personal and a lot less interesting. It recounts Paley’s own heartbreak story, where her partner, enamoured by his new life in India, grows increasingly cold and disinterested in Nina. In some sort of vague and arrogant analogy, it seems Paley is comparing her situation to the plight of Sita and using the Sanskrit epic as leverage to gain more emotional pull for herself. Sadly it doesn’t really work, and only serves to stultify and detract from the ecstatic rhythms of The Ramayana.

Luckily, the side story doesn’t hold enough screen time to spoil what is a delightfully charming, witty and visually ferocious 1 hour and 30 minutes It painted a wide smile on my face that lasted for the entirety of the film.

Paley’s artistic endeavour has landed her in $20,000 debt, a sum that she is unlikely to recoup. If you enjoy the film, please pass on the word; it’s the least the project deserves.

Film Review: In the Loop

In the Loop

Dir. Armando Ianucci
[BBC Films]

2009 Might be over, but there remains a slew of films I didn't get the chance to see. Armando Ianucci's tale of Washington and Westminister's hysterically desperate attempt to control the media-spin on the Iraq war, is one of them.

Based on the British comedy, The Thick of It, In the Loop is a grown up satirical comedy examining the confounding idiocy within the inner-circles of the British and American governments. Although the film is littered with purposeful political jibes, it never takes itself too seriously and focuses mostly on the funnies.

The dialogue and pacing of the film is delivered at a staccato pace, with sharp interminable verbal assaults at all angles. The clever and brilliantly juvenile script is sharp and focused with every character delivering his line with unerring conviction and astute comic timing.

Whilst the direction is fairly pedestrian, adding little to the scene and detracting little from them, it is perhaps exactly the stance the film demanded. Ianucci ditches the shaky camera work employed in The Thick of It, believing it wouldn't have transposed well to the big screen and instead uses lots of quick zooms to get that raw and energetic feel.

In the Loop is my favourite comedy of 2009. It's clever, but not too clever; It's politcal, but not too political; It's feriously funny without a momentary lull, exceedingly charming and well executed.

Favourite Films of 2009

1. Fish Tank

Dir. Andrea Arnold

[BBC Films, U.K]

Arnold follows her dark and stunning debut, Red Road, with something more palatable but no less uncompromising. Quietly intense, the films' ‘gritty’ social realism resulted in a deluge of comparisons to the work of Ken Loach. Whilst there are legitimate points of comparison, Arnolds' style and execution is vibrant and original, deserving of acknowledgment outside of a ‘Loachian’ framework. To me it certainly felt like the years most important piece of filmmaking and bodes well for British cinema.

2. Mary and Max

Dir. Adam Elliot

[Melodrama Pictures, Australia]

Director Adam Elliot eschews the shine of this years other animation successes: Up, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, etc. Eliot instead favors an intensely muted colour palette of browns, grays and blacks, perfectly matching the somber, gloomy melancholy that presides over the lives of the characters. Wonderfully weighted, perfectly timed, emotionally poignant without any schmaltz and visually creative and exciting, Mary and Max was my favorite surprise of the year. Despite the slightly depressing subject matter the film does not lack mirth. There are wonderful moments of joy that arrive from the strangest of places, making the feeling enormously powerful. Whilst some might bemoan the fact that it's not suitable for children, I think it's great to get an animation all to ourselves.

3. Let the Right One In

Dir. Tomas Alfredson

[EFTI, Sweden]

Glancing over the synopsis of LTROI, you could be forgiven for mistaking it for just another teen-vampire film, circling Twilight’s monopoly. However, apart from it being a coming-of-age story of a teenage vampire, the two films have nothing in common. Alfredson’s Nordic tale of vampiric love has all the grace and dolorous beauty that its counterpart lacks. Superbly crafted and wonderfully understated, perhaps the films' biggest triumph is that it somehow doesn’t feel like a vampire film. Alfredson deserves further praise for abstaining from displaying every frame of gore and action to the viewer. Often the violence is meticulously framed so that we don’t see all that is happening but still feel the full effects. The film culminates in an impeccably orchestrated finale, which ranks up there with my favourite scenes in cinema.

4. Frozen River

Dir. Courtney Hunt

[Cohen Media Group, U.S.A]

Following a surge of films about forgotten middle-America (see: Ballast) and American explorations of social realism, Frozen River is certainly the most impressive feature debut of the year. With extremely tight resources, Hunt crafts a tense and terse thriller which examines the dangers and desperations involved in illegal immigrant smuggling. There is an authenticity that runs throughout the film, helping achieve a relentless portrayal of poverty stricken America. The film falters in its final moments, succumbing to the temptation of resolving order and seeking redemption. However, for a debut feature, such minor problems are easily overlooked.

5. Moon

Dir. Duncan Jones

[Liberty Films U.K, U.K]

So, Bowie’s son can direct, and he also digs space. Sweet. It’s great to see a British film of this kind made so well. Jones carves out an otherworldly atmosphere of brooding solitude and despair and creates a meaningful work of science fiction, accessible to those not familiar with the genre. For me, the ‘poignant’ themes of memory and existence raised in the film were fairly glib. The films true accomplishment is in the crafting of the distinctly original eerie tone.

6. The Hurt Locker

Dir. Kathryn Bigelow

[First Light Production, U.S.A]

Kathryn Bigelow masterfully recreates the immeasurable tension and fear of the everyday duties of soldiers in Iraq. The story is told honestly and without over-sentimentally. Brutally tense and terse, it’s hard to imagine a more accomplished cinematic representation of modern warfare.

7. Adventureland

Dir. Greg Mottola

[Sidney Kimmel Entertainment, U.S.A]

Admittedly, this film has been done before, and will be done again. However, Despite it being a big ‘ol indie clichy with precocious geeks getting girls that are way too hot for them, there’s a great amount of sensitivity and humour in the story. Unlike many films of its kind, were encouraged to laugh at the pretension of using phrases like ‘per se’, rather than take it seriously (see: Squid and the Whale) Mottola really cares for his characters, resulting in complete plausibility in spite of their generic indie-boy/girl credentials. Added charm supplied by a wonderful Yo La Tengo score and music from The Velvet Underground. It’s a film that made the most of its conventions and resources and packed a whole load of charm.

8. Where the Wild Things Are

Dir. Spike Jonze

[Warner Bros. Pictures, U.S.A)

Only days after seeing the film, my memories of it are blurred in a childlike reverie. This is exactly the films strength. Jonze captures the chaos, unstained imagination and innocence of childhood and presents it to us in a thrilling hipster-friendly spectacle.

9. An Education

Dir. Lone Scherfig

[BBC Films, U.K]

Desperately charming, wonderfully acted and greatly entertaining, An Education is certainly the most quintessential English production of the year. Carey Mulligan’s preciously elegant lead performance as Jenny is stunning and reason enough to see the film. The film is packed with British charm and whit but tends to gloss over the darker elements of the story that would have provided much needed shadow from the gleam.

10. Watchmen

Dir. Zack Snyder

[Warner Bros. Pictures, U.S.A]

In short, if you’re a fan of the comic, you’ll love it. If you’re not familiar with the source material, you’ll most probably be left mystified as to why it’s often lauded as the greatest-ever graphic novel. The film sort of requires background knowledge to understand the depth of story. Perhaps this is bad filmmaking, or maybe it’s just impossible to get all the issues of the comic into a film of a watchable length. Either way, for fans of the comic it still was a remarkable experience to see the characters of Watchmen immortalised on screen.

Honorable Mentions

Sin Nombre (Cary Fukunaga, Mexico)

Paranormal Activity (Oren Peli, U.S.A)

Milk (Gus Van Sant, U.S.A)

Looking For Eric (Ken Loach, U.K)

The Fantastic Mr. Fox (Wes Anderson, U.S.A)

Star Trek (J.J. Abrams, U.S.A)

Up (Pete Docter, U.S.A)

The Imaginarium of Dr. Panassus (Terry Gilliam, U.K)

Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs (Phil Lord and Chris Miller, U.S.A.)

Inglorious Basterds (Quentin Tarantino, U.S.A)

The Wrestler (Darren Aronofsky, U.S.A.)

Mary and Max (Adam Elliot, 2009, Australia)

With 2009 drawing to a close, one of the most deleterious nuisances to cinema since Hugh Grant is successfully winning over audiences and reconnecting them to the movie-going experience. I’m talking about 3D cinema, of course. Whether or not there are ‘immersive’ benefits to 3D cinema, it does not change the fact that it was dreamt up by marketing men in an attempt to combat piracy. The idea being that the audiences now gets something impossible to replicate for free in their bedrooms. Well, at least for the time being.

I personally do not see the benefits of 3D and believe it adds nothing to the cinema going experience, apart from an added expense. It’s has a detrimental affect on independent cinema, with Cineplex’s reserving the few digital projectors for 3D films, forcing smaller films to distribute through the more costly medium of 35mm, and it encourages filmmakers to concentrate on gimmickry instead of storytelling.

Right, now that that’s all out the way, it’s my pleasure to say that my favorite film of the year is an animation that uses good-old stop-motion, without a sniff of 3D nonsense.

Based on a true story, Mary and Max is a dark, brooding tale of friendship between an aging New Yorker, voiced by Phillip Seymour Hoffman, and an eight-year-old Australian, voiced by Toni Collette. The two strike up a warm long-distance pen-pal friendship that spans over a period of twenty years, bonding initially over their shared love of chocolate and a children's cartoon called The Noblets.

Director Adam Elliot eschews the shine of this years other animation successes: Up, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs, etc. Elliot instead favors an intensely muted colour palette of browns, grays and blacks, perfectly matching the somber, gloomy melancholy that presides over the lives of the characters. Interestingly, Elliott decides to starkly contrast the colours used for the New York landscape to that of Australia. In New York there are only blacks, grays and whites with a smatter of red, whilst the Australian colours consist of a drab sun-kissed red. This tonal juxtaposition makes for stunning imagery and works wonderfully when the two worlds meet in the films climax.

The merits of Claymation are clear to see. There’s a tremendous amount of inventiveness and character in the craft and it somehow seems that there’s comparatively much more graft and endeavour in the art of Claymation than there is in CGI animation. That might not actually be the case, but it certainly feels that way and as a result there is a heightened sense of admiration and awe attached to it. Each second of the tactile stop motion is crammed with detail that brings what are essentially just lumps of clay to life.

I can’t think of any significant flaws in the film. It’s wonderfully weighted, perfectly timed, emotionally poignant without any schmaltz and visually creative and exciting.

Despite the slightly depressing subject matter the film does not lack mirth. There are wonderful moments of joy that arrive from the strangest of places, making the feeling enormously powerful. Whilst some might bemoan the fact that it's not suitable for children, I think it's great to get an animation all to ourselves.

A Scene to Remember

Every week this section will be looking at a scene or moment in film history that has, for some reason or another, resonated with me and left an impression.

Chameleon Street (Wendell B. Harris Jr., 1989, USA)


Every moment of Chameleon Street is crammed with wonderfully witty wordplay. For a directional debut Wendell B. Harris Jr. has complete creative control, having both written and starred in the film too. Harris does a stellar job of all three and is one of the only men that can out-cool Morgan Freeman's voice.

The films lack of success over the years is puzzling and obviously irked Harris who never wrote, directed or starred in another film.

Nuovo cinema Paradiso (Giuseppe Tornatore, 1988, Italy)

An epic tale that has it all: humour, warmth, sincerity, drama, fantasy and most importantly a true sensitivity for its characters.

Nuovo Cinema Paradiso Is the story of Toto, a young boy growing up in small close-knit Sicilian village in the 1940s. The fatherless Toto seeks a father figure in Alfredo, the only projectionist in the village. Alfredo nurtures Toto’s love for cinema and educates him in the art of projection. The film is structured in a series of flashbacks with Toto, now known as Salvatore, reflecting on his childhood experiences and how they shaped his future.

There seems to be conflicting reports amongst critics on the best version to see; the original theatrical release, or the interminable Directors’ cut. Having not seen the original theatrical release I can’t pass judgment on which is the better of the two. However, what I can say is that all three hours of the directors’ cut seems necessary to me. There are a great number of films that would have benefited from greater editorial gardening, but I don’t believe this to be one of them. Admittedly, there is a minor lull in the middle of the film, which I assume was pruned from the theatrical release, but even so, it never feels bloated or becomes tedious. There are moments of Almodovar-esque melodrama that eek into the directors’ cut that perhaps distract slightly from the films core. That being said, I would happily have watched another three hours of footage, with or without the melodrama.

Despite how engaging and pleasing the film is both emotionally and visually it does suffer from a series of problems. From the beginning the film is unashamedly romantic and nostalgic, which works well for the most part, but there are moments where it becomes overly sweet and schmaltzy. Another problem is that the somewhat clichéd and one-dimensional representation of rustic village life renders it to be emotionally glib.

In spite of these problems, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso still manages to remain sincere and in its final scene delivers one of the warmest and most sincere moments in film history. It’s a love letter to cinema and will be thoroughly enjoyed by all film aficionados for its countless references to cinema of the past.

For those of you that are unconvinced about watching it, it's worth seeing simply because it's scored by Ennio Morricone! (see trailer below for a snippet of the wonderful score)