It’s not often that Tilda Swinton hits mainstream cinema, yeah? It must be the draw of George Miller; the fact that Three Thousand Years of Longing is directed by an Australian has pulled this strange-looking movie into a wide release. Now, I know next to nothing about this movie – I’ve seen the movie’s poster and that’s it. I go in blind and hope to come out illuminated…
Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) travels the world, learning and lecturing on the nature of stories; their impact on us, and their progression through history. In Budapest, Alithea finds a quant blue bottle in a discount shop and takes it back to her hotel to clean. What happens next would make Robin Williams proud – genie, three wishes. The problem is that Alithea is perfectly content in her self-sufficient middle-aged life; she has no true heart’s desires to muster for the Djinn (Idris Elba) to grant. But she wants to get to know the Djinn, figure out his character and learn from his life’s long journey. We better want that too because it’s a long conversation to be had.
Storytime – twice I have seen The Big Lebowski and twice I have gotten to the same scene thinking, why the hell is this so beloved? What the hell is this all about? But I get to that scene, and it clicks for me, and I adore The Big Lebowski like everyone else – it’s the limo scene, where Jeff Bridges Lebowski is asked for a ‘please explain’ 😊 Similarly, I had no idea what was happening in Three Thousand Years of Longing for the longest time; it felt like another one of those well-made movies, with imagery so deeply creative at times, but I felt like it was missing an emotional connection, and I was definitely missing the point. But in the final scene it clicked, and I came away with an understanding, or at least a personal interpretation of what I’d just watched…
It’s about storytelling. Alithea is a narrativologist. (And is that a real thing? Is that what I am, analysing stories in all these reviews? An amateur one, but still). For the runtime Alithea is doubting if this Djinn is a trickster and we are doubting if Alithea is sane. Every time I was about to be bogged down by the simple telling of stories in a hotel room, a shot would occur to make me realise that there’s something else going on in here, something bigger. There’s the leg tapping as the scientific wife Zefir (Burcu Gölgedar) reads, just like Alithea did in the opening scene on the plane. There’s a giant close-up of a gulp from Alithea, which reflects the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum) and her gulp when she meets her male match. Alithea has many glass bottles in her home just like Zefir as well, and she pulls on a red string to bring light to the basement, just like King Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad) had to find as a task. Ultimately, I think the Djinn is a manifestation of Alithea’s imagination, as she is detailing her own inspiration for an upcoming best seller – admittedly, the movie opens by saying that all these events are a hundred percent true, so but perhaps I’m simply a dimwitted non-believer. There were times when I was wondering what the hell the first two encounters with mystical beings – the small person at the airport, and the ghost in the auditorium – had to do with any of the rest of the movie, but I think the answer is pretty straightforward, in that the small person probably was an unlicensed taxi driver, but inspirational, as Alithea’s colleague’s mocking suggestion that he could’ve been a Djinn puts the idea in her head. And the ghost, well, Alithea’s imagination had been running wild recently. And I think the key to all this summation is the story of the boy Alithea made up as a child, who seemed very real, just as the Djinn does now.
There were times where I also wondered, ‘George Miller waited eight years since Mad Max: Fury Road to bring us this?!’ The Djinn’s second story is a weak one, lurid and gritty, but I must admit the runtime flew by for me, all but for that short period. Yet I consider Three Thousand Years of Longing a meticulously created piece, since the final scene brought it all together for me. Of course, a movie about storytelling is going to appeal to me – I like how the movie weaves simple and small elements of everyday life into significant storytelling traits, because that’s what storytelling does, highlighting tiny moments to make them imperative. What I get out of Three Thousand Years of Longing is just to play. Be creative. Silence out the chatter, and make the most of your own desires, for they may be trivial, but they are also fleeting. Three Thousand Years of Longing might be one of those movies that I appreciate even more over time, or through multiple viewings. I’ve thought about giving the movie a pre-emptive score, but I’ll stick with how I feel about it right now. It’s definitely the lesson, or the feeling I’m left with from the whole that is more valuable to me than the journey through its parts – I’m like the Djinn in that way, as one year in the bottle would be agony, but the resulting story is the lesson gained.
Is Idris Elba a good actor? I’m fortunate enough to have watched The Wire so I know he is, but his movie career has been filled with fanciful fluff and blockbuster – I’m not knocking the guy for making a career but something like this is acting, as opposed to, what I suppose you’d consider moviemaking. As I referenced in the opening, Tilda Swinton, on the other hand, lives in the arthouse. I have been later than most in recognising her vast and deeply talented range, but what a stella career she’s had. I got the smallest chortle out of Idris Elba saying ‘we have all the time in the world’ which is pretty much his audition for James Bond, yeah?
3.5
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