Three Thousand Years of Longing is a film about storytelling, loneliness, and love! It is based on the short story in the anthology, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye: Five Fairy Stories (1994), by A.S. Byatt. It is directed and co-written by George Miller, who yes last directed Mad Max: Fury Road (2015), but the closest of his movies to this one would be the comedy/fantasy/horror, Witches of Eastwick (1987). Miller gives an introduction thanking audiences for seeing the movie in theaters. The film is also co-written with Augusta Gore, Miller's daughter, her first movie credit. We hear the narration by Tilda Swinton’s character that this is a true story, but could best be understood as a fairy story. Her character, Alithea, has an unusual occupation, narratology?, but basically it is explaining the symbolism in mythology. Swinton reprised the Ancient One role voicing the What If…? episode, “Doctor Strange Lost His Heart Instead of His Hands?” (2021). She is on a flight; reading, nervous, constantly tapping her right leg, and a little mousy, wearing glasses.
Her colleague is Professor Günhan (Erdil Yasaroglu). They land in Istanbul, a little, bald man with strange eyes tries to get Alithea’s attention, and then manages to slip into the crowd as her colleagues greet her. In a van, they ask her if she believe in djinn. Her hotel is the Pera Palace Hotel where Alithea is shown to Room 411 where she is told Agatha Christie wrote Murder on the Orient Express. They head over to a convention to present a narratology speech. Alithea has a post in front of the stage while Günhan introduces the presentation about the gods, then this shifts into the modern mythology with Jim Lee’s DC Comics featured prominently on one screen. Interesting considering Miller’s Justice League: Mortal film. On the other side is a panel of Marvel Comics characters. Still, she sees in the audience, a tall man in white robes.
Alithea is distracted and continues with the speech. The man then appears in the front row. She tries to go on, but the strange man leans forward and his mouth opens to devour Alithea. Her colleagues try to revive her and the audience claps that she has regained consciousness. Later, Alithea walks with Günhan and confides that she has seen strange visions, but shrugs them off. Alithea’s narration mentions the Grand Bazaar and Günhan takes Alithea to visit one shop. She digs through a pile of blue beads to find a white-striped, blue bottle. Günhan tries to get her to buy another bottle, but Alithea is set on getting that bottle because it might have “an interesting story.” In her hotel room, Alithea, in a white bathrobe and her hair wrapped in a towel, tries to clean the bottle. She uses an electric toothbrush that opens it! This spills an orange and purple mist into the sink and then swirls into the next room.
Giant fingers, dark and gold, reach into the bathroom. She walks into the room and tries to close her eyes and count so this vision will go away. Alithea opens her eyes and the massive Djinn (Idris Elba). The actor is in the survival drama, Beast, which opened last week, and of course he shares a MCU connection with Swinton appearing in Avengers: Infinity War (2018) as Heimdall. His language is unknown to Alithea so she tries to find language in common until she uses Greek. The Djinn activates the television and pulls out a projection of Albert Einstein. Alithea finds that he has learned English and then offers her three wishes. He says there are laws and Alithea says that wishes are “cautionary tales.” She tells him about being alone at an all girls school, young Alithea (Alyla Browne) read and made an imaginary friend she called Enzo (Abel Bond). She threw her book about Enzo into the furnace and he disappeared afterwards.
Later, Alithea says that she married Jack, (Peter Bertoni), but Jack said she couldn’t really talk to him. He leaves her for another woman. Alithea becomes comfortable being alone. The Djinn then says he had been trapped three times. The first time concerns Queen Sheba (Aamito Lagum) whom he loved. Djinn explains that what she knows about the story is all wrong because he was there. Then, King Solomon (Nicholas Mouawad) arrived and tried to seduce her with music. He plays a harp, but the string breaks. Solomon restrings it and then small hands play tinier strings and hands drum from trumpet parts of the instrument! This part made me think of the bizarre worlds of Terry Gilliam’s The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (1988). Sheba places impossible tasks for Solomon, but their love is inevitable and imprisons Djinn. Most of the story takes place within the hotel room and the stories of the Djinn. Miller crafts a small, challenging drama that bursts through with wild storytelling that reveal the loneliness and love of both characters in Three Thousand Years of Longing!
Five Djinn Bottles out of Five!
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