Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)
Directed by George Miller
United Artists Releasing, 108 minutes, R (mild nudity and violence)
★★★★
No one has ever accused Tilda Swinton of playing it safe when it comes to considering movie roles. She’s unorthodox in demeanor, temperament, and appearance–the sort of actress that shows up as a sultry vampire or looks like a David Bowie doppelganger. In Three Thousand Years of Longing she’s a cross between a nebbish librarian and a gal wanting to unleash her libido. Plus, she has her own djinn (genie).
This fantasy film is based on an A.S. Byatt story but could have been culled from 1001 Arabian Nights. Swinton is Alithea Binnie, a narrologist, an overly serious and dorky scholar of stories, myths, and legends. She’s analogous to Dan Brown’s symbologist Robert Langdon in that she can instantly recall detailed meanings embedded in obscure sources. She is in Istanbul for a conference when she stumbles into a shop, sidesteps the owner’s efforts to sell her something elegant, and leaves with a misshapen blue bottle that somehow appeals to her.
When she’s alone, she prises off the top, inhales spicy dust, and the giant form of a djinn fills the room. Most people would be alarmed by that, but Alithea isn’t most people. At first, she thinks she’s hallucinating—she’s prone to doing so—but she’s not. Nor is the bottle’s resident djinn (Idris Elba) typical in any way other than being required to grant three wishes. Alithea is not falling for that. She’s a narrologist after all, and she can’t think of the scenario in which a genie’s granted wishes turn out well.
Our unnamed djinn is very happy to be out of his bottle but is perplexed by her lack of desire to wish for anything. He tries all his wiles to tempt her, but Alithea only wants to listen. As we learn, he’s a powerful djinn but not a very strategic one. Alithea is thrilled by his stories of course, and the djinn has many. He has had numerous lovers over the centuries, including the Queen of Sheba, one of Suleiman’s concubines, and a Turkish merchant’s wife. But he has always managed to miscalculate and become reimprisoned in his bottle, once for 3000 years!
It would be safe to say that Alithea and her djinn make an odd couple no Broadway play or TV show could conjure. He continues to badger her into wishing for something–maybe it’s in the genie bylaws that you need to do that–but she is the ice to his fire. In essence, it’s a standoff between a powerful spirit and a canny dweeb. When Alethia finally does wish for one thing, her choice is surprising and is willingly granted.
You probably know that genies are common in arid lands, but not so much in damp climes. Complications arise when Alithea brings her bottled djinn to London. Let’s just say that adaptations are the order of the day.
Despite what I have written so far, Three Thousand Years of Longing is a film for adults, not Harry Potter in a bottle. It only works because director George Miller of Mad Max fame sets free two terrific actors to find their comfort levels with one another. Of the two, Swinton is the oddest, which is quite an accomplishment when your co-star is a mythical figure. Swinton is rational and stubborn in temperament; Idris is, by turn, pleading, stormy, resigned, and tender. As a djinn, though, he has all the time in the world!
Like the characters in this film–and it’s largely a pas de deux–I cycled through various moods and impressions. At first, I found the entire premise absurd. But I grew perplexed, then anxious. In the end I was charmed.
This is a quirky film and I’m not at all shocked that it fared poorly in theaters. Even after having gone to DVD and onto numerous streaming platforms it has largely fallen between the cracks. That’s a nice way of saying that not many people have seen it. My advice is to watch it and let it work its magic.
Rob Weir
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