Three Thousand Years of Longing
Alithea Binnie is above all a practical woman, content in her life, well-regarded in her field, middle-aged, divorced, comfortable with her own company and more interested in intellectual than emotional engagement, a narratologist who studies the stories of different cultures who finds herself part of one which she chooses to convey in the form of a fairytale.
Reasoning that this will be the natural form for her story, the one in which it is most likely to be accepted and believed, it begins with her trip to Istanbul where she purchased a decorative glass bottle in the bazaar within which was a Djinn; released, as is the expectation, it offered her three wishes, but instead Alithea was more interested in the Djinn itself, the stories of its life and those who previously encountered it.
His most recent film Mad Max: Fury Road, director George Miller’s contemplation of Three Thousand Years of Longing could not be more different in pacing or premise, yet it retains his sharp eye for detail in setting and costume as the three tales which comprise the history of the Djinn are recounted, each of them resulting, as Alithea predicted, in tragedy for the Djinn and those it has loved and served.
Starring Snowpiercer’s Tilda Swinton as Doctor Binnie and Prometheus’ Idris Elba as the unnamed Djinn which has found itself bound to her, neither performer is stretched by the script by Miller and Augusta Gore based on A S Byatt’s short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, spending the majority of the film listening to and telling stories in a luxury hotel room while wearing plush white bathrobes.
That these stories are artfully conceived and rendered is undeniable, the unparalleled beauty of the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), wooed by King Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad), the slave girl Gulten (Uce Yüksel) who desired that the prince would love her as she loved him, merchant’s wife Zefir (Burcu Gölgedar) who wishes only knowledge, yet vicariously experienced through the weary eyes of the Djinn the emotion is muted, the downfall of each character already ancient history.
Miller not unaccustomed to the fantastical having also made The Witches of Eastwick, where that was mischievous and passionate Three Thousand Years of Longing is stagnant and staid, the subtext suggested by Alithea’s observation that “all gods and monsters outlive their original purpose and are reduced to metaphor” unexplored as the film pursues domesticity over wonder, squandering opportunity as foolishly as those who wish away their lives.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is currently on general release
