Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)
Three Thousand Years of Longing is an uneven, but also a sweet and moving picture, about the love affair between a Djinn and a narratologist.
The film, based on a short story by A.S. Byatt, is not without its flaws. But the fact that it stars Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, and is directed by the great George Miller (Mad Max: Fury Road) sure does help it to overcome most of its narrative shortcomings.
Swinton plays Dr Alithea Binnie, a divorced narratologist who is happy to live for her academic work but who also suffers from accidental hallucinations.
When Alithea goes to Istanbul to attend a conference, she accidentally releases a Djinn (Idris Elba) from a bottle. In exchange for his freedom he offers her three wishes.
But Alithea is too rational to just comply in something so fanciful and also, as a scientist, she knows too well from the mythology that a lot of Djinns are tricksters. So she keeps in mind the saying: be careful what you wish for as it might come true.
However, the Djinn is not one to give up easily, so he decides to tell Alithea his life story, and explain how he, despite all his powers, came to be locked in a bottle for thousands of years. And not just once...
The answer, in short: love.
It is these stories, set in ancient Turkey, that form the heart of the movie, or at least for the first 75 minutes. Visually, they are a joy to behold. Miller and his Director of Photography John Seale really are masters when it comes to painting with pictures.
Narratively, however, this is where the movie stumbles a bit. Alithea and her Djinn spend a lot of their time together cooped up in a hotel room, while most of the backstory is told in flashbacks. As there isn’t any real conflict in the present, this takes the edge of the drama and makes the movie at times feel a bit stilted.
What saves it is the genuine sweetness of the last half hour of the story, and above all, the wonderful chemistry between Swinton and Elba.
‘Love is a gift,’ Alithea tells Djinn at one point. ‘It's a gift of oneself given freely. It's not something one can ever ask for.’
There is a lot of talk about love in the movie, and not all of it is free of cliches. But there is a genuine desire to connect, not only between the actors, but also between the movie and its audience.
George Miller is a versatile director, who made a name for himself with the Mad Max-series, but also wrote and produced the first Babe-film and directed the follow up Babe: Pig in the City. He directed the hit movie The Witches of Eastwick and won an Oscar for the animated movie Happy Feet.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is not his best movie, but it is still a worthy addition to his canon. It is a movie about the power of telling stories which is in parts hampered by its own clumsy storytelling, but is still, for the most part, emotionally satisfying.
The movie cost 60 million dollars to produce and will make perhaps a little over 20 million at the global box office, with only a couple of countries to go. So it’s a commercial flop, whether you will go and see it or not.
It is also a visually rich movie, starring two of the best actors working today. For me, it was enough.