Although Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022) is the latest film from the director of Mad Max: Fury Road, We were expecting something more like Only Lovers Left Alive, partly because they both sounded lushly romantic, partly because they both co-starred Tilda Swinton.
Swinton plays a narratologist, a scholar who goes to conventions to talk about story. This one takes place in Istanbul. Even in the airport, a small bald man in a flamboyant coat tries to grab her luggage (but no one else sees him). Then, when she is trying to deliver her address, a strange, tall man (?) in fancy ecclesiastical garb in the audience keeps distracting her. She confesses to a college that she sometimes sees apparitions, hallucinations of supernatural beings. But she chalks it up to an over-active imagination.
She picks up a a bottle in a quaint old antiquities shop, and what do you think it contains? A djinn, of course, played by Idris Elba. He starts out enormous, filling the hotel suite, radiating heat and speaking Homeric Greek, the only language he shares with Swinton. But he quickly absorbs the internet and all of TV. He shrinks down to human size and starts talking English. And he must grant Swinton three wishes if he is to be truly free.
But Swinton studies stories for a living, and she knows what dangers a wish can bring. So she refuses to wish - even accuses Elba of being a trickster. So he tells her of the three or four times that he was imprisoned in a bottle. These stories, told in flashback, make up the bulk of the movie. The first goes back to Solomon and Sheba, and so on. I won't get into these except to say that they are lush and romantic, and sometimes silly. In one, the Sultan is a big, dumb baby-man who is kept locked in a harem with a dozen or so fat naked women. It's funny, but also beautiful - like a Goya, Rubens or Caravaggio animated.
Hearing these stories lets Swinton choose her first wish - that the djinn fall in love with her. She has been a solitary type, and her great love was an imaginary boy from high school. But now she has a great love, a powerful supernatural being. And it doesn't much change her life: she goes to work in the morning and comes home to her magical lover. But will he be able to stand up to modern life?
AS I've said, this movie is full of inventive, beautiful visuals. Now, I did feel a little like George Miller is not the best in the biz at this - some of the shots struck me as just a bit less than the best. There's a shot showing the blue glass bottle in orange tissue paper, folded almost like a bird of paradise flower. It's lovely, but possibly a bit flat. The movie has some action sequences that maybe suited him better. But I would never complain - if it isn't all perfect, it is all very good. And both Ms. Spenser and I asked, why can't all movies be so beautiful? Why can't they all be full of intelligent, interesting people talking about deep issues? Why aren't lush romantic visuals the default?
I also liked Swinton's character, who is a solitary, unmarried (divorced) woman who dedicates her life to scholarship, but she is not a bitter or regretful old maid. She knows what she wants, and she has it in abundance. Why would she wish for anything else? The wishes must be her heart's desire, and maybe she already has that. I put this down to the original story, written by A.S. Byatt - who I haven't read for some reason, although she does look like my kind of thing.
In conclusion, beautiful, engrossing, fresh, with two beautiful lead actors. Why doesn't everybody do this?
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