So, I fell a little behind on new releases, and now I’m working to get caught up. I was going to see the new Idris Elba-fights-a-lion movie Beast this weekend, but then I heard about Three Thousand Years of Longing, the latest from director George Miller, a movie where scholar Tilda Swinton meets a Djinn played by Idris Elba, all in a meditation on narrative and storytelling. Given how much this year I have gotten kicks out of movie with similar sorts of grand titles like Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent, perhaps I would have similar success with Three Thousand Years of Longing. The description alone made the whole movie sound like it was right up my wheelhouse.
Besides, I’d be seeing Idris Elba no matter what.
Scholar Alithea Binnie (Swinton) is visiting Istanbul for a conference talk. She studies narratives and storytelling, and she claims to be very happy basically just having her job and not much else. She has no family of her own, does not appear to have any friends, nor does she claim to want any. By chance, a bottle she finds contains a Djinn (Elba), and he says she has three wishes. He dispenses with his standard spiel that she has three wishes. There are some conditions, many of them likewise standard–no wishing for more wishes or immortality–but the wishes must be for what Alithea’s heart desires most. Once Alithea has made her wishes, the Djinn is free to go and do whatever it is his kind do.
Small problem for the Djinn: Alithea knows all the old stories, and she knows the whole “three wishes” thing never works out the way the wisher wants it to. If it always goes wrong, why should she wish for anything, particularly since she feels she already has everything she needs and wants in life. The Djinn can’t leave her until she makes those wishes, and to that end, he’ll tell her about his own life and his own past masters, stories that all ended tragically because, well, maybe life is kinda tragic. He says he isn’t a trickster Djinn. But the problem may be something very basic: what does Alithea really want anyway?
I knew, going into this, that it was an ambitious project, and that Miller would put together something that would probably be visually dazzling. That much is true. Miller, who also co-wrote and produced-is basically looking to tell a story about storytelling. Elba acts mostly as narrator for a good chunk of the movie as it goes back and tells the story of the Djinn’s past masters and miseries, and there some really creative stuff on display here, both visually and narratively. If nothing else, Miller was trying to pull off something really big with this movie.
And it doesn’t quite work. It comes very close to, but it just doesn’t manage what I was hoping for. I wanted this movie to be so much more than it was, but the various parts don’t quite add up to a good whole. I generally enjoy seeing Elba and especially Swinton, and they’re good here, but something about this movie makes it feel longer than it is. The various individual stories and threads are often beautifully constructed and even a bit whimsical, but somehow the movie seems to get less ambitious as it goes along in a weird sort of way as the Djinn’s story gets closer and closer to the present day. It’s never, like, a realistic drama or anything, and the performances are never bad. It just felt like there was something not quite cohering for me. Still, it’s an ambitious movie and worth a look.
Grade: B
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