Months ago I was checking this out, look at some minutes, loved it, decided to watch it very soon, and forgot about it. Now it came back with a vengeance, animation weeks at home, checking out all those forgotten master pieces that somehow never manage to grab the attention while the big Oscar contenders or the Summer blockbusters are around. Good animation, it seems, is so terribly subtle and humble. “Chico and Rita” the other day certainly was, this one is, and The Illusionist (to follow) is the master of this below the radar greatness. “Sita Sings The Blues” is basically a bunch of Indian people telling the story of the Ramayana, the Indian mysticism about Sita and Rama, lovers and semi-gods (as far as I understand) , torn apart by intrigue, bound by love, reunited by adventure, separated by etc. etc. The animation style(s) is (are) lovely, alternating between the three or four levels of the narration. The plot is driven by what sounds like the script writers in the writing room arguing about the story line of the Ramayana. The structure then is a bit twisted, as the Hindu backstory is told in two or even three different ways of animation. Parallel to this runs a story of a New York couple that suffers separation, and seems to reflect the worries of Rama and Sita in the tale. Whether it is necessary to twist it the way they do, it is great to watch and to listen to – an integral part is a list of songs by a 1920s singer crying out her emotions about love lost and found … sounds interesting? It is, and great fun, too!
The film is available for free under the Creative Commons license. The production story itself is amazing, as this is virtually a one-woman production… incredible achievement!
Free Download of the Movie here: http://sitasingstheblues.com/wiki/index.php?title=SitaSites
And general homepage: www.sitasingstheblues.com/
And the Wikipedia page as back story: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sita_Sings_The_Blues#Unorthodox_distribution
And Rotten Tomatoes, where they still hold a solid and unbeaten 100% on the Tomatometer: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/sita_sings_the_blues/
thomas4cinema 