Courtesy of Metro Goldwyn Mayer
Movies
All things considered, Aussie Mad Max director George Miller has been a fairly minimalist creative type. He’s the sort of filmmaker who lives in the visuals of his work, and that’s how he’s churned out some of the most memorable action films of the last 40+ years. In Three Thousand Years of Longing, based on the the short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by AS Byatt, however, Miller delves deep into myths and fables, marrying them with a bit of magic realism and an enduring love letter to the history of storytelling to boot.
Its results are a canny and wildly enjoyable throwback tale that recalls the likes of Princess Bride and 2006′s The Fall, but which treads stylistic heights and grounded realities among its more fantastical elements. Simply put, it’s one of the more fun movies to come out in ages, and it is most definitely made for the big screen.
In Longing, Tilda Swinton is Alithea, an introverted British narratologist with a penchant for the history of storytelling. During an academic junket to Istanbul, she begins to hallucinate terrifying creatures, but these are only a prelude to the crux of the matter: She buys a bottle in a shop from which appears a djinn (Idris Elba). Fascinated by how she came into possession of such a magical creature, she wonders how he was imprisoned, and so begin a number of tales of love, fate and the machinations of powerful and powerless women and men. Miller, who also co-wrote the script with newcomer Augusta Gore, leans into the pitfalls of the unreliable narrator as well as the tropes found in mythological cautionary tales.
You’ll find real Turkish history mixed within myths here, though told from perspectives not just belonging to the victors; other than a stilted final act which too subtly and too suddenly asks us to consider how love is gained and given, Miller crafts a lovely, magical world where instruments play themselves, families come apart and violence changes people forever.
Swinton presents an oddly adorable character who slowly learns to embrace her emotions. Elba, meanwhile, finds a magnetic and sympathetic intersection as the djinn, a being who seems perfectly comfortable addressing and unpacking his flaws. The moral, then, is somewhat open-ended, but it’s fun to consider one’s own take for days after seeing the film. And what a time it is.
8
+Gorgeous and provocative; Swinton is fab
-Jarring final act
Three Thousand Years of Longing
Directed by Miller
With Swinton and Elba
Violet Crown, Center for Contemporary Arts, R, 98 min.
