Too much there there

July 10, 7:58 PMPhiladelphia Movie ExaminerWilliam Sternman

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Sita Sings the Blues, a full-length animated movie, is imaginative, inventive, even adorable. And after ten minutes, unbearably tedious. That’s because once you get used to the novelty, it wears off and there’s nothing else to engage your mind. It’s pretty much the same thing over and over again.

American  writer/director/animator/designer/editor Nina Paley retells a simplified version of the Indian epic The Ramayana three (maybe four) times—concurrently. At first, it’s hard to follow; then it’s monotonously simple. To paraphrase Gertrude Stein, “There is too much there there.”

Two versions seem to be more or less traditional. The third has a stereotyped comic-book bimbo singing songs from the 1920s like “Mean to Me” and "Daddy Won't You Please Come Home?" The vocals are by Annette Hanshaw. (Her "Moanin' Low" reminded me of Claire Trevor’s desperate, humiliating alcoholic rendition in Key Largo (1948) so she can cadge a drink from sadistic Edward G. Robinson. He decides her singing wasn't good enough.)

The fourth storyline doesn’t seem to have anything to with The Ramayana and felt like an intrusion. I learned later that this is Nina Paley’s story of how her husband went to India, invited her to join him (she had to give up her cat) and then rejected her. After mourning her loss, much like Sita, she starts life anew with another cat. As the companion of two former stray cats myself, I thought she made the wiser decision. Human beings come and go in one’s life; cats are forever.A movie should be self-contained. You shouldn’t have to bring outside knowledge with you in order to understand it. It’s really a self-indulgence on Paley’s part to shoehorn her own saga into a movie where it has no relevance. But since she was also the producer, there was no one to save her from herself.

One thing that hasn’t changed since the Ramayana myth was first told is that a woman becomes soiled merchandise if another man touches her. Rama rejects Sita because he assumes (without any proof whatsoever) that she has had sex with the man who abducted her. When her sons are born, he wants to take them with him, but he still rejects her as unclean. If the sons aren’t his, why would he want them? And if they are his, how can he still consider her impure? (The same kind of logical skewering takes place with the burqa. If a man is aroused by the sight of woman’s body, isn’t that his problem, not hers? Why should she have to cover herself up because he has no self-control?)

You can watch this movie free in its entirety here.