Three Thousand Years of Longing - a fantastical love story about desire
As the opening credits for Three Thousand Years of Longing, I noted George Miller’s name, somewhere in my brain - I managed to put together George Miller and Mad Max Fury Road - so already I knew to expect something a bit mad and off the wall. It’s worth noting that George Miller’s back catalogue includes (amongst Mad Max movies) Babe, Babe: Pig in The City (a film that I will not hear a bad word said about) and Happy Feet. Interestingly, I’ve only recently just watched Mad Max Fury Road for the first time and I absolutely adored it. So I had hopes of Three Thousand Years of Longing being a bit strange, ethereal, full of heart and enjoyable. I’d say most of those expectations were met but in other places, it falls a little short of expectations.
Three Thousand Years of Longing revolves around Alithea (played by one of my favourite screen presence's Tilda Swinton) a Narratologist, who is attending a conference in Istanbul. She comes across a small glass vial in a typically Arabian antique nicknack shop, and decides to take it home as a memento of her trip. Whilst attempting to clean it in the bathroom of her luxury hotel, she snaps the top of the vial off releasing a Djiin, played by Idris Elba. Djinn offers her three wishes, as long as they are her heart’s desire. Alithea, sceptical of the whole thing, and also well versed in the typical narrative trajectory of genie’s and three wish stories, plainly states that she has no desires, and even by her own admission, a solitary creature by nature, so is perfectly happy as she is. Djinn begs her to make three wishes to ensure his freedom from his bottled prison. The bulk of the narrative of the film is the Djinn recounting tales of granting wishes to queens, princes, sultans and various other strange and wonderful characters we meet along the way.
The most notable thing on Three Thousand Years of Longing is the visuals. I think based on George Miller’s previous cinematic outings, visuals were always going to be a strong aspect of this film. It’s sumptuous, colourful, glistening. There is a velvet-like richness and texture to the movie. It’s the kind of movie you can spend hours looking at and still find something new to absorb the third time round. It’s heavily CGI reliant which in contrast to Mad Max Fury Road is jaw-droppingly devoid of CGI interference. There is a child-like quality to this movie, which makes sense - it’s narrative is about fantastical tales, historical epic love stories, with smatterings of maturity - emotive stories that aren’t just princes and princesses falling in love.
There are parts of Three Thousand Years of Longing that fall short. There is a space in the movie that never feels full, the dry relationship between Alithea and Djinn doesn’t feel satisfactory, and feels a bit perfunctory and there are no challenges for them. Also, at nearly two hours long, it does feel long. It at times seems absent of satisfying conclusions, and often it’s bogged down in it’s own universe; a movie about stories told by a storyteller to a narrative expert who seems intent on undermining the point of the stories she’s being told. When watching it, I commented to my husband that I felt like I was watching a book, I never know if that’s a good thing, but there was a book-ish quality to the film that maybe hasn’t translated well to screen. The scenes with Alithea and Djinn feel a little static and end up feeling bloated, lots of ideas never fully explored, and there is a lot going on in this film. The tales are told at breakneck speed, leaving little time for the viewer to absorb what is going on. But in the midst of everything happening, there are the beautiful fantastical visuals. There is particularly striking scene of musical instruments playing themselves which I marvelled at. And there is an unashamed diversity of bodies on screen - something that is evident in Miller’s previous works with the human female characters in Babe and the wet nurses in Mad Max.
The final third of the film feels terribly rushed, and the conclusion - whilst it was charming and poignant, feels tacked on and a bit drab in a visual symphony of a movie. I really enjoyed the visuals, and the element of fairytale storytelling - something I have a real fondness for since Pan’s Labyrinth perfectly personified the cinematic fairytale. But there is something in this film that leaves it feeling disjointed. I can’t put my finger on it, maybe it’s the smallness of the world of Alithea, the muted main storyline which is dominated by tales of the fantastical and the confusing character of Djinn. He’s supposedly a powerful being that seems to be at the disposal (mostly of white women) and by this definition, he loses any narrative power. I feel mostly positive about this film because in a sea of films that have shoddy CGI, I like that George Miller does his own thing - probably at the despair of production execs. He’s definitely been given carte blanche to go a bit crazy on a passion project after Fury Road, and the upcoming additions to the Mad Max franchise. It’s worth a watch if just for the visuals, but if you’re looking for a powerful narrative, strong characters etc, you might want to skip this one.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is streaming on Amazon Prime.