It’s been seven years since George Miller blessed the world with Mad Max: Fury Road, one of the best films of the 2010s and one of the best sequels/action movies of all time. With his new movie Three Thousand Years of Longing, he adds to his diverse filmography with a brilliant postmodern reimagining of the three wishes djinn (genie) stories that were told to us as children. You know, those old folk tales where a genie grants his master three wishes in order to be free. The protagonist Alithea (Tilda Swinton), a narratologist who is an expert on these stories, unintentionally awakens a giant Djinn (played by Idris Elba) while attending a work conference in Istanbul. His golden foot takes up the entire doorway of her hotel room before he shrinks down to a human size, which is just one of many dazzling visual effects that appear throughout that accentuate the storytelling with rich color and originality.
The majority of the plot plays like an interrogation where Alithea is probing into the Djinn’s past because “there’s no story about wishing that is not a cautionary tale.” Idris Elba perfectly plays the unnamed Djinn in a somber and weathered performance that is fitting for an immortal being and while his ears are pointy and beard dyed there is smartly no distracting CGI to take way from his performance like the fully blue Will Smith in the live-action Aladdin remake, for example.
What follows is the Djinn recounting the three thousand years of his life under different masters and because djinn’s don’t sleep some of these periods of captivity are told with great agony. But is he trying to gain sympathy from Alithea in order to trick her or is what he saying genuine? I will warn those looking for easy answers, Miller who co-wrote and directed the film isn’t interested in providing them as much as he is in asking questions about the human condition. This is most clearly shown with the perfectly content Alithea who narrates the film but who might also not be the most reliable character as she faints early in the film and admits to seeing apparitions related to the stories she lectures about.
Djin’s life story is told in gorgeous flashbacks, which tell history’s great myths from a first-person perspective. Occasionally Alithea will interject with her expertise. “All of the legends say that Sheba followed King Solomon” she remarked before Djin corrects her that it was actually Solomon that was pining for the affection of the remarkable beauty. Sounds more accurate. The storytelling device allows for playful banter and comments on the tradition of storytelling itself, like Tim Burton’s Big Fish or Rob Reiner’s Princess Bride.
And because of the self-awareness of the narrator and how these stories usually end, I found myself eagerly anticipating how this tale would conclude. The three stories include a tragic love story with the beautiful queen of Sheba, a concubine wanting to bear the sultan’s son in the Ottoman empire, and the wife of a Turkish merchant with a thirst for knowledge. All three deal with love and what we sacrifice for the ones we love most even across a millennia in a vibrant and poetic manner.
George Miller is so adept at balancing centuries of story through sweeping transitions and camera movement, even though I could have just listened to Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton (two of our greatest actors) just tell stories to each other in the hotel room for hours. It coheres together into a beautiful piece of art that shows lavish fashion, production design, and visual effects. The third act in particular shifts in location and tone, but the bonding of Alithea and the Djinn prepares us for a finale that is melancholy and tender.
I didn’t know what to expect from this going into it, but it ended up being a most pleasant surprise and one of the highlights of 2022.
Final Rating:
‘Three Thousand Years of Longing’ is available now on Blu-Ray and Digital.
Rated R.
(Photos: MGM)
