This animated film is so ingenious and fantastic. I really enjoy how Nina Paley incorporated many different animation styles into this musical. The opening sequence is my favorite, so I added an image of it below. I also love the various Indian styled music in the background and I love how the jazz music was incorporated into Sita's story. It's so funny that the image I used in my reading notes for Part D of the Public Domain Ramayana is a still picture from this movie! I especially like the three narrators telling their version of the stories. You can tell that this is an unscripted retelling full of individual interpretations and discussions of the literature. It shows just how varied the Ramayana story can be and that there is a tradition of passing the story down through different verbal and written versions. I particularly enjoyed the discussion of why Sita didn't simply return to Rama with Hanuman. Also, I had no idea that Hanuman was a reincarnation of Shiva! His character just becomes cooler and cooler the more I learn about him.
The parallel story line with the couple from San Francisco is interesting and shows the applicability of Sita's tale, but I'm wondering where it's heading. It seems that a majority of the Ramayana was covered in this first part so I'm very unsure of what is even in the second part. The only thing I can think of is that they have ignored some large parts of the story, including Vali's war with his brother and how the couple met. I will be quite upset if these aren't mentioned by the end as I'm already annoyed that the narrators didn't know that Ravana couldn't rape Sita because she was cursed. However, it would make Ravana's character more complex and fascinating if he was able but chose not to force Sita into lying with him.
Bibliography: Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley,
Web Source
No comments:
Post a Comment