Review: Three Thousand Years Of Longing

Image courtesy of MGM.

"Three Thousand Years of Longing" - director George Miller's first film since 2015's "Mad Max: Fury Road" - might be mistaken for the type of whimsical fantasy to which Tim Burton might be attached or Terry Gilliam might have concocted during his jollier period.

Based upon a short story by A.S. Byatt and filled to the brim with eye popping imagery, the film starts as an offbeat fantasy involving a self-isolated woman (Tilda Swinton) who gets granted three wishes by a djinn (Idris Elba) who has been trapped in an ornamental bottle for hundreds of years, but the movie later becomes something more unexpected.

As the film starts, Alithea (Swinton) - an academic who specializes in "narratology," or the study of storytelling - is arriving in Istanbul at the invitation of a friend to take part in a conference in her field. She is taken to a lavish hotel room where she is told that Agatha Christie once wrote "Death on the Nile." 

From the start, something seems off - Alithea's baggage is nearly taken from her by a miniscule man at the airport, and while speaking at the conference a man who looks like a knight sits in the audience and glares at her.

At an antique shop, she buys the ornamental bottle, which she then accidentally pops open once she's back in her hotel room. The djinn - in massive form - appears in her hotel room, but then shrinks himself to more acceptable proportions. He tells Alithea she must make three wishes to free him from being trapped between worlds. In an attempt to convince her of her duty, he regales her with various stories of past people to whom he granted wishes and how he came to be trapped multiples times in the bottle.

The film's setup bears some resemblance to the "Arabian Nights," in that much of the action typically involves characters other than Alithea and the djinn - although he pops up throughout the stories - and much of the film's running time is spent on the stories the djinn tells, that is, until a final chapter in which the picture takes a surprisingly different turn.

Alithea makes it known to everyone who'll listen that she's self-sufficient - she and her husband split up years before and she has made no effort to replace him, and the only conversation she has with her two semi-racist neighbors in London is in the form of squabbling. Alithea's third and final wish is what sets off the final series of scenes, which are more delicate and moving than you'd expect in a movie that, up until this point, was whimsical, fantastical and full of special effects.

Although "Three Thousand Years of Longing" is a more minor Miller picture - it's not on the level of, say, his "Mad Max" movies - it's a film that is often full of surprises, solid storytelling and stunning visuals. For a director best known for a series of action films about a lone avenger living in the deserts of Australia, it's interesting to see how his latest film tackles the hardships of being alone. While the film may not be considered one of the director's major works, its takes on companionship and the art of storytelling remain compelling throughout.