Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Score: 3.5 / 5

What a weird and wonderful film. George Miller, creator of the Mad Max and Happy Feet franchises, is kind of a weird dude. And thank goodness, because his movies are just so bloody interesting and fun! His latest -- while he is indeed working on Furiosa -- is a strange story that feels like a very old fairy tale. Visually beautiful, thematically ambitious, and somewhat bizarre, Three Thousand Years of Longing is a great time in the cinema, and it's probably best to see this one on a large screen, but if you find yourself even a little tired or distracted, I fear this movie will leave little more impact on audience minds than a feverish daydream.

Tilda Swinton stars -- thank heaven -- as Alithea Binnie, a British academic who specializes in what she calls narratology, the study of stories. She's seemingly content to be solo in the world, as she travels to Istanbul to lecture at a conference, even though she occasionally has hallucinations (or visions) of spiritual beings around her. One gives her such a fright that she faints at the podium, and quickly returns to her hotel room. Notably, she is told that her room is where Agatha Christie wrote Death on the Nile, which reinforces that this story will indeed be about storytelling. We wonder if her love of trinkets and texts are in fact bulwarks against the creeping sense of loneliness she barely conceals under a certain level of performative propriety and sass. Swinton excels at this kind of complex character work, and here she is firing on all cylinders and apparently having a lot of fun doing it.

While recuperating, she tries to polish an ornamental bottle she purchased on the street before a genie -- djinn, really -- erupts into her suite. This is where Miller starts having fun as director, making the djinn comically large in the otherwise pristine, clinically white room. It helps, sure enough, that the djinn is played by Idris Elba, who is already somewhat larger than life and whose knowing smile and sparkling eyes always seem ready to laugh. He's not doing a Robin Williams impression here, rather grounding his djinn with the emotional weight of the title, which it seems is meant to apply to his character. Upon learning some English from the proper lady, he offers Alithea three wishes with the usual stipulations (no wishing for more wishes, etc.). What he didn't anticipate -- and one of the chief joys of this movie -- is that Alithea's narratology expertise won't let her wish her wishes away. She knows the stories, naturally, and she won't be hoodwinked. Wish-fulfillment tales rarely work well for the wisher, often due to the wisher's greed or stupidity, but also sometimes due to the wickedness and treachery of the wish-fulfiller. Alithea won't be had, not by this guy, and so she starts asking him questions to see if she can trust him.

The film continues from here in a series of three stories the djinn tells Alithea to answer her questions. I'd have to rewatch to remember all the specifics, but essentially he was the consort of the Queen of Sheba until Solomon showed up with his song. The production team goes all out with these stories, dressing actors in stunning costumes, placing them in elaborate and fanciful locations and sets, and filming it all with whirling kinetic energy and vibrant colors. I wondered at first if Miller would evoke the grandeur of DeMille's biblical-era epics, and he does a little bit, but mostly he takes us on a tour through CGI dreamland to fantastic effect. Which is to say, it sometimes feels a bit too fantasy-like, as if we're being dared to compare it to A Wrinkle in Time or other bright, child-oriented fare. Miller excels in practical effects (as we saw in Mad Max: Fury Road), but this time (like in Happy Feet and Babe) he also proves his mettle with predominantly digital effects, claiming his place as one of the most free and experimental of big-budget directors and as one who is willing to change his aesthetic to fit the needs of the story he is telling. How appropriate for this particular material.

As the djinn tells his stories, Alithea slowly softens to him, becoming more inquisitive of his identity and deeds even as she reflects on her own hidden self. She lacks love in the same way the djinn has been repeatedly bereft of love; the two could be said to share one fundamental truth, that of unrequited and incessant longing. It's not a profound idea, and it sounds kind of banal to say. But the film is anything but banal in style, and its choice to situate Alithea and the djinn over a tapestry of the history of the world makes this film feel cosmic in scope. Not unlike Darren Aronofsky's underappreciated cosmic love story The Fountain, actually. The stories are filled with violence and lust and eroticism, though it's all done quite tastefully (with a few graphic exceptions that earn it that "R" rating). Compared with the institutional design of Alithea and her suite, it's easy to see why she fantasizes about his stories even as we see them.

Yes, this is a love story, and without totally spoiling it, a large part of that love is Alithea learning to love herself or, more accurately, to accept the desires of her heart for herself. It's a wonder to behold, even if it's not really the most dynamic or novel story. I fear to some extent that accusations of orientalism will be lobbed at Miller and this film, and those are worthy considerations to consider, especially as a white audience member. But I also think that Miller is one of the few white filmmakers working now who can rise a bit above those debates because of the passion and compassion of his earnest efforts of storytelling. He works hard to make sure the ancient world of the djinn's stories are not whitewashed, and he also works to place the white Englishwoman protagonist firmly in her place as privileged and naïve and even self-deceived. Plus, there's the undeniable energy of this film, which doesn't look like the work of a 77-year old; not that that makes a difference in terms of representation or integrity, but it's a strong indicator of a lifetime of work that deserves to be seen. Much like Alithea, actually. Can you tell with which character I identified a little too intensely?