Sita Sings the Blues

This proudly low-tech animated feature harnesses an unlikely but wholly beguiling combination of the Ramayana, literary analysis, jazz-era music, autobiography and home moviemaking. Comic-strip artist Paley uses the Hindu story of Rama and Sita—he’s a king whose wife is kidnapped by a rival, but once he rescues her, he doubts her purity—as a counterpoint to her own experiences separating from her husband after he takes a job in India.

The mix doesn’t quite add up to a sense of narrative momentum, but the main thing to praise about Sita is its distinctive look. In an age of 3-D monsters and aliens, Paley demonstrates how much mileage you can get out of Flash-animated bobble motion and one-eyed bats. (The collagelike sequences of competing narrators debating the motives of the characters are particularly striking.) But why the blues? Well, why not? Paley finds effective moments in the story for the songs of jazz luminary Annette Hanshaw, making particularly catchy use of “Daddy Won’t You Please Come Home?” This is the kind of personal filmmaking that could only have come together through a chance set of inspirations. Maybe you could call it fate.

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