'Three Thousand Years of Longing' Review: Your Wish is George Miller's Command
Occasionally, it needs to be restated that Happy Feet, Babe, Lorenzo’s Oil, and the Mad Max series were all directed by the same man. Director George Miller’s resume is astonishing, both for its variety and also for its quality. But while it’s easy to praise his vision and command of imagery as a director, we cannot ignore that as a writer, he is a truly gifted storyteller who can casually leap from genre to genre without a falter or stumble. He proves it again with Three Thousand Years of Longing.
Tilda Swinton portrays a narratologist (yes, narratology is a real study, look it up) named Alithea Binnie. She leads a solitary, detached, passionless existence, even when she joins a group of scholars in Istanbul for a conference. However, this existence is shattered when an antique bottle she bought turns out to contain a Djinn (Idris Elba). As can be expected, the Djinn promises to grant three wishes, and Alithea is naturally unnerved and paralyzed. She skeptically tries to find a trap in the Djinn’s offer, while he is perplexed that she seemingly has no heart’s desire to wish for. But although these two beings are as different from each other as you can get, they bond over their shared desire to hear and tell stories.
We learn more about Alithea’s past, but the majority of the storytelling concerns the Djinn’s adventures. The film explores myth, legend, and history. We are introduced to such ancient figures as the Queen of Sheba, King Solomon, Ibrahim, Suleiman the Magnificent, and Suleiman’s ill-fated son Mustafa, all through the eyes of this Djinn’s interactions with them. The screenplay by Miller and Augusta Gore is an adaptation of A. S. Byatt’s The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, but it is also an adaptation of humanity’s past.
Simply put, this film is one of the most visually creative that Miller has ever made, and that’s saying a lot. Ancient worlds are recreated and reimagined through an almost mythological lens. Throughout the journey across millennia, constant themes return. These themes include isolation and imprisonment, stifled desires and loneliness, distrust and doubt, and a solace in stories. Stories coax laughter from a bloodthirsty conqueror, and they remind a lonely spinster of what passion feels like. We are also invited to remember just how much of our knowledge of human history is rooted in stories, passed down countless generations.
As with any story with such an ambitious scope, some things get lost by the wayside. For instance, it’s established early on that Alithea is haunted by supernatural entities. Are they hallucinations? Are they connected with the world of the Djinn? The film never tells us. And despite the brilliance of the storytelling sequences, the film does suffer from a confused pace. One won’t be lost when it comes to this story, but they might be scratching their head at times. Why, for example, were those two bigoted old women in the film? What did they really bring to it? The film would have benefitted from another story from the Djinn instead of their wasted screentime.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is a fascinating cinematic achievement. Unlike the monologue at the end of a similarly ambitious fantasy series, this film knows how to properly pay tribute to stories. It frames itself as a fairytale, and recreates bygone eras, down to the languages which the characters speak. While some might accuse the film of being too vague, too overreaching, or even too ambitious, I found it to be a fascinating experience which proves once again just how fortunate we are to have someone like George Miller telling us stories.