Sita sings the blues

There is a controversial movie out there called "Sita Sings the Blues" - I've only seen excerpts of it. In some ways it's like "The Hours" - it interweaves real life with the classic Hindu epic of the Ramayana. Basically, the woman who made this movie was married to a guy who went off to India for a long term project, and wound up dumping her. She had a crisis, found comfort in reading the Ramayana, and decided to make an animated movie. To her surprise, she found herself viciously attacked by the conservative Hindu movements for what they feel was an insult to their sacred text. She was also decried by left wing liberals as a racist and neocolonialist, since in their eyes, no white woman should make any statements about a non-white topic which can be in any way interpreted as controversial.

Discounting the left wingers (which is a separate discussion altogether), what I find funny and sad about this situation is that the two sides so totally don't get where the other side is coming from. The filmmaker cannot understand why her personal interpretation of the Ramayana, which she clearly made as a labor of love, should be interpreted as in any way offensive. While the conservative Hindus cannot understand how someone can have the creative urge to build upon their epic, yet be able to critique it and adjust it to their own worldview.

It's kinda funny, because one of the commenters on the Youtube page basically summarized it like this: The director got dumped by her husband in India, so what better way is there to crap over all Indians than to denigrate the Ramayana.

He just doesn't get it...

BTW, Here is the trailer of the film...