New-ish & now-ish: Three Thousand Years of Longing
George Miller’s dazzling fantasy-romance about the art of storytelling should have gotten a fairer shake.
By the end of 2020, it was unclear whether the movie industry would survive COVID-19. As 2021 came to a close, things seemed to be rallying, but only slightly, and whatever life had been pumped into it came almost entirely from Marvel movies. What would have once been a sure bet for huge box office returns, like Steven Spielberg’s stunning take on West Side Story, struggled to find an audience, most of whom were reluctant to return to theaters even after vaccinations became wildly available. Almost a year later, the movies aren’t just back, baby; they’re back with a vengeance. Not only is the box office recovering (albeit still slowly), but we’re seeing some directors’ best work in years and, even more importantly, signs that audiences are finally interested in seeing more than just proven properties with superhero capes attached to them.
Unfortunately, with such a resurgence in le cinema came a few casualties. Among the surprise flops of 2022 have been the #metoo docudrama She Said, David O. Russell’s old-timey crime caper Amsterdam, and Billy Eichner’s romantic comedy Bros, all of which had robust (bordering on aggressive) advertising campaigns, but generated little audience interest. Also accomplishing this dubious achievement was George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing, which earned a dismal $2,9 million on its opening weekend, despite playing in nearly 2,500 theaters. It was quickly ushered out of theaters barely two weeks later, as if its distributor intended never to speak of it again.
This is a shame because, while not without its flaws, Three Thousand Years is a dazzling feast for the eyes, a wholly original just-for-grownups fantasy about the timeless power of storytelling, and it doesn’t deserve to be forgotten.
Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a narratologist1 attending an academic conference in Istanbul. For someone who’s made fables and folklore her life’s work, Alithea is practical to the point of boring and doesn’t seem to have much going on beyond her studies. She’s drawn to an antique bottle, and because even she’s not boring enough to resist, she gives it a rub, unleashing an enormous djinn (Idris Elba). However, this djinn isn’t playful and eager to serve like the Genie in Aladdin. He’s serious to the point of mournful, and his sole purpose for granting Alithea three wishes is that it will release him from the bottle (and any further servitude to anyone) forever.
Bestowing three wishes (with some limitations, like no wishing for more wishes, etc.) on Alithea proves to be far more of a challenge to the djinn than he expects. Though she lives modestly, she claims to want for nothing, and when asked to name what her heart truly desires, she has no answer. Complicating matters further is that, thanks to her literary expertise, Alithea understands all too well the concept of “be careful what you wish for,” and knows that djinns can often be tricksters, either interpreting wishes literally2 or willfully granting them in a way that leads to disastrous consequences. Though this djinn tries to convince her that his intentions are pure, she remains skeptical.
In a reverse take on Scheherazade, the djinn, his eternal freedom on the line, regales Alithea with stories from his own life, spanning millennia from the Middle East to the Ottoman Empire to 19th-century Turkey. They’re tales of love, loss, and wishes gone wrong, usually due to arrogance or impetuousness. Some feature real figures from history, such as Suleiman the Magnificent, who wrote poetry to his favorite concubine but had his own son executed, and Sultan Murad IV, a vicious warrior who drank himself to death before the age of 30. The djinn is a ghost drifting through all these stories, watching and lamenting the human folly, and, in some cases, getting all too attached to them.
Despite her skepticism, Alithea finds herself moved not just by the djinn’s stories but by his compassion, empathy, and fascination with the world. Eventually, she makes a wish.
For all of its fantastical elements, Three Thousand Years of Longing has a simple, uncomplicated concept. The djinn is a supernatural being, but he’s experienced the same kind of pain mortals have: the pain of rejection, the pain of loss, the pain of unrequited love, the pain of not being listened to, and, perhaps the sharpest hurt, the pain of not being seen. It isn’t very wise of him to empathize with humans, especially since it rarely seems to come to any good, but he can’t help himself. They fascinate him, and so he opens himself up to that pain over and over, much like many of us insist on watching movies and reading books we know will make us cry. It hurts, so much, but at least you know you’re alive.
The emotions Miller’s movie explores are matched only by its visual sensuousness of it. Much like Tarsem’s The Fall (a film that’s bafflingly unavailable on streaming in any format), even if nothing about the plot worked, it would still be a pleasure to look at, decked out in a vivid palette of blood reds and burnished golds, where even the mundane has an imperceptible glow. It’s often sexy, sometimes vulgar, and occasionally funny, but always fascinating,
If the movie struggles anywhere, it’s in its pacing. The third act, in which Alithea, now in love with the Djinn, brings him back to London to live with her, feels thinly drawn and rushed. It also introduces her nasty elderly neighbors, who serve no other purpose but to denigrate her profession and go on a racist rant. Presumably, this is meant to be amusing (we love it when old ladies say horrible things, don’t we?), but given the recent political climate, both in Great Britain and the U.S., it doesn’t work. Ultimately the characters are superfluous anyway, so it feels like an oddly sour note in an otherwise dreamy and often whimsical movie.
Still, all is forgotten in that regard with its bittersweet but ultimately hopeful ending. I won’t give it away, because it’d be nice if Three Thousand Years of Longing found a bigger audience. But I will say this: the stories we tell bind us to each other, in one way or another. Those threads remain, millennia after millennia, across one ocean to the next. They follow us wherever we go.
A fancy word for someone who studies the history and structure of storytelling.
For more information, see the Wishmaster series.