Director: George Miller
Cast: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Aamito Lagum, Kaan Guldur, Burcu Gölgedar, Matteo Boticelli, Ogulcan Arman Uslu, Jack Braddy
Genre: Fantasy, historical, romance
Country/Language: USA/English
Duration: 1 hr 48 min
Rating: A
George Miller, behind the epic Mad Max: Fury Road, has brought us Three Thousand Years of Longing, a fantastical, dream-like film. Starring screen legends Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba as a scholarly woman and a genie respectively, the film mixes modern day life with magical powers and historical scenes to make a visual masterpiece. Miller has claimed it to be his passion project, having wanted to make it for the last twenty years.
Based on the short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A. S. Byatt, Three Thousand is filled with lavish set pieces, sumptuous costumes, sword-fights, dark magic, fantastical creatures, and plots of conspiracies and assassinations. Containing all these elements, you would assume the film has passion and cinematic high. But these two are mostly missing in what is, otherwise, a good looking movie with talented actors.
Swinton and Elba are fantastic. Elba (Hobbs & Shaw, Zootopia) displays emotions of affection and loneliness that spans centuries like the seasoned actor that he is. You cannot help but love this genie. The visual effects are marvellous too as they render Elba as a humane, noble creature once, and a fearsome figure the next. Swinton (Narnia, Okja) is awe-inspiring too as an ageing scholar who studies gods and myths. The Scottish actress gets the nuances right in portraying a complex woman: Alithea is perfectly content in losing herself in stories. But there’s a part of her that still craves intimacy and love.
However, Swinton does not get much to do in the film, except watch captivated as Elba narrates stories of past splendour. In fact, this is almost the entirety of the film: the Djinn telling Alithea everything he’s been through. It’s not the idea one would have gotten while watching the trailer which hints at a more plot-driven movie.
The film has a message about the richness of love, and the dark side of making and granting wishes. But these lessons either come much later in the film, or play out so regularly you wonder if there’s another message hiding somewhere.
There’s also the rest of the cast who, in spite of their undeniable talent, portray characters which are left largely unexplored. These characters include the biblical Queen Sheba, Gulten the concubine, princes Murad and Ibrahim, and Zefir, a housewife secretly nurturing her love for science. As intriguing as their descriptions sound, these roles are more two-dimensional than deeply felt the way Alithea and the Djinn are. It doesn’t help that we only get to spend time with each character for a chapter or two.
A story of such a massive scope and expansive timeline works well only if it is anchored by deeply fleshed out characters. The epic war and court scenes, although visually ravishing, lack in substance thanks to the rather shallow characterisation. They feel like characters in historical reenactments of documentaries, bodies whose jobs are to scowl (with a cold steeliness) while threateningly marching or swinging a sword. But they barely speak and, when they do, it is often not subtitled. So there is a linguistic, as well as cultural, barrier between these mysterious humans and us.
Yet, there are glimmers of grace, universality and genuine intimacy in some subplots. One example is when Prince Murad, now a traumatised and bloodthirsty ruler, finds some peace in the narrations of an elderly storyteller.
A great story (about Queen Sheba) explores betrayal and lost love, with strange creatures and a show-stealing instrument. This level of intrigue, however, is more and more lost as the film progresses.
A feminist plot is then explored (but only on a skin-deep level) when the Djinn meets a woman who is in an arranged marriage to a rich, older man. Actress Burcu Gölgedar is outstanding as the trapped housewife Zefir who is secretly a genius innovator. For some reason, she never wishes to be freed from her marriage. An incredibly intelligent woman can use magic to leave a loveless marriage and still thrive as a scientist…. but she chooses to stay? This is something waved off by the characters and never deeply confronted again, which is beyond frustrating.
Frustrating also are some unaddressed incidents earlier in the film. When Alithea is giving a lecture in Turkey, she sees a vision of a god in white robes. She ignores him and keeps talking about how religion is increasingly getting irrelevant and will be replaced by science. It’s an incredible scene that I cannot remember seeing in any movie before. Unfortunately, this subplot never gets addressed again. Similarly, Alithea encounters a dwarf creature at the airport. This plot, too, is not explored. Something tells me these incidents may have made for a more interesting film than what we actually get. There is also a romantic twist halfway which seemingly appears out of nowhere.
All of this and yet no sight of Tilda in an armour suit slaying dragons. Three Thousand Years does not grant our wish. What we do get is a rumination on love and longing, and to some extent, the passage of time – topics that will seduce older audiences. But I don’t think most people (who were entranced by the trailer and are probably young) expected to see this when they sat down. Still, it’s amazing that a story with high ambitions, a high budget and an auteur’s vision – but a wandering plot that refuses to stay for too long on a single individual – has been made possible. We have the privilege to feast on an unconventional plot structure and some opulent visuals. Now that is a wish granted.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is now in theatres.
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