Year of Release: 2022
Director: George Miller
Starring: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Erdil Yasaroglu, Nicolas Mouawad, Ece Yuksel, Megan Gale, Lachy Hulme, Zerrin Tekindor, Matteo Bocelli, Jack Braddy, Anna Adams, Melissa Jaffer, Anne Charleston, David Collins, Lianne Mackessy, Peter Bertoni
Genre: Drama, Fantasy
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 7
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
After the critical and commercial success of "Mad Max: Fury Road", writer/producer/director George Miller decided to adapt a short story from A.S. Byatt, in collaboration with Augusta Gore. The film follows the story of a British scholar by the name of Alithea Binnie. We discover her arriving in Istanbul for a speaking engagement. After an episode during the engagement in which she loses her senses, Alithea goes to a bazar and purchases an antique bottle. Back at her hotel, she decides to clean the bottle, and in the process of doing so, releases a Djinn who has been trapped within it. The Djinn offers her three wishes, explaining to her the limits of what those wishes are and what he can achieve. Alithea suspects there are possible unexpected consequences from her wishes, and what starts as a conversation about wishes, it evolves into the a narrative about what has happened to the Djinn throughout his existence. He starts with the Queen of Sheba, his cousin and lover who is seduced by King Solomon, who in turn traps him, followed by a second chapter where he narrates a story where he's discovered by a young woman named Gulten, who while asking for a few wishes, fails to request the final one, leading the Djinn to a dark entrapment once more. In his final chapter he references Zefir, the young wife of a Turkish merchant, whom he eventually falls in love with, a brilliant woman filled with an immense creative mind, who eventually wishes they have never met, resulting in the Djinn once again being locked. Alithea is moved by his stories and wishes for them both to fall in love. They travel back to London, and while Alithea manages to get back to work, her loved Djinn has issues with the satellite transmissions and overall technology surrounding them, since it interacts with his electromagnetic physiology. She realizes she has to make a difficult decision on how to insure his survival.
"Three Thousand Years of Longing" is an interesting fantastical narrative that at its core, holds something that permeates across all of George Miller's feature films: this everlasting love story that is either present or has existed, which drives and influences the behaviors of his lead characters. This can be witnessed across his "Mad Max" features, "Lorenzo's Oil" and even his animated features "Happy Feet". In this case as the Djinn narrates his life and ultimately his failures at finding love and a soul mate that understands him, he also showcases his vulnerabilities to someone who seemingly closed that part of her existence, only to be reawakened by him. It's a film that has some echoes of the excess of a Terry Gilliam film (there are some set pieces very similar in tone to "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen"), but where the sincerity and emotional side of it make it that much more distinct. George Miller manages to bring to life these distant worlds, and populates it with threadbare characters, therefore anchoring the character development and the trappings of the narrative in the relationship between the Djinn and Alithea. And that's where the film has its biggest strength and weakness. Strength in the sense that as their relationship evolves, something magical is captured, but simultaneously is indeed its biggest weakness because it's not sufficiently developed, and eventually wraps itself up a bit too briefly and perfectly. In a film that is about love and its immortal quest, the magic of the Djinn is better captured than the poetry at the heart of a love story. Tilda Swinton is wonderful, even if the role deserved a bit more, the same going for Idris Elba. This film needed a nod in the direction of what Sally Potter has done with "Orlando" for instance, allowing for this central relationship to be more at the core of the narrative. The production team is fantastic, including John Seale's stunning cinematography, Kym Barrett's costumes, Roger Ford's production design and Tom Holkenborg's score. Worth watching.
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