Three Thousand Years of Longing

Be Careful What You Wish For (Three Thousand Years of Writing)

or

"My Imagination Has Been Getting the Better of Me"

 

Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a "narratologist" by trade and preference, an academic, content to live alone, although she will attend a convention or two, give a lecture, but mostly study the story-form, which she speed-reads while her foot is nervously keeping a rhythm of what she absorbs. That's the only action she gets out of life, her scholarly ruminations being a way to avoid it, like so many cinema-collegiates of the past (and film critics for that matter). They're book-learned but street-dumb, cloistered in the metaphorical Ivory Tower that keeps them high above the fray. They can study, but only vicariously experiencing life through witness testimony. She is—to quote a line from Play It Again, Sam—"one of the world's great watchers" ("great" being used ironically). 

 

While on a working vacation to Istanbul, she has two instances of hallucinations—walking through the airport, a wizened little person accosts her rolling luggage and when she protests—and her minders at a conference approach her—it runs away and disappears in the crowd. Then, after going to her hotel and settling in, she is sitting on stage preparing to be introduced to speak when she sees a demonic shamanic figure sitting in the audience, shifting into increasingly closer seats until, with a blink, he is standing before her and....

She faints. She recovers, but shakily, and insists on going on, what, to her, is a traditional addition to her every itinerary—a visit to a bazaar to purchase a memorial trinket, usually of glass. She becomes enamored of a fluted bottle, deeply encrusted with age and the dust of ages and determines to clean it in her hotel room sink. Before doing that, one should always check about double occupancy with the concierge (and if you've booked a smoking room).

And, of COURSE, a genie (Idris Elba) comes out of the bottle—haven't you seen the previews? After a slight period of adjustment—language, electronics—we get down to the essential matter: freed from the lamp, blah-blah-blah, three wishes, Heart's desire, blah-blah-blah, don't ask for any more wishes,* and we don't even have to sing along to "A Friend Like Me." Alithea is familiar with all of that—she's read all the stories. She knows the tropes. She's an academic! And the problem is academic. Three wishes? "There's no story about wishing that isn't a cautionary tale." Damn straight! The iconography is full of people who end up with a million ducks or a twelve-inch pianist or end up as Hitler. So...she just doesn't want to do it. She's happy. She's comfortable. She makes a living, if not exactly living, but she's okay with that. Why risk it, when there's the possibility that her djinn is a trickster...or worse, a literalist? Three wishes? Go blow smoke!

This is very frustrating for the djinn. "There is no human, nor angel, nor demon, who wouldn't grasp at the chance to fulfill their deepest longings. And I am saddled with the one who claims to want nothing at all? Alithea Binnie, you are a liar!" Not really, though. What sort of teacher would she be? But, without a hat-trick of granted wishes, he is tied to her and can't be released to his freedom in Djinnsleyland. Such a fate would even make Barbara Eden grumpy. Intrigued by his frustration and because she is who she is, Alithea compels the djinn to tell his story of the three "incarcerations" (as he calls them) that have kept him trapped for three thousand years. The first of which involves Solomon and Sheba, the second involves the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, where the the Djinn is forced to wander for 100 years, and finally, the third, of the wife of a Turkish merchant, whose final wish banishes the djinn to the bottle where Alithea has found him, trapped. Hence, the title Three Thousand Years of Longing.

Writer-director George Miller (phd) stages these events with the same characteristic inventiveness and momentum that he brings to his "Mad Max" films, but where those films (and most of his output) has had a boy's own hard edge to them, this tale (from the  77 year old director) shows itself to be not only a rich fantasy film, but a resonant and uncynical love story as well. For all the djinn's stories have, as their basis, the djinn's devotion to his "masters" and their resolution by repaying that devotion with some form of rejection. The first by replacement, the second by forgetting, the third by denial. They are all melancholic, sad stories from the djinn's point of view, in which he is the one who is tricked and suffers his own forms of banishment by those he was bound to serve. Alithea hears these stories and realizes the djinn is no trickster—just the opposite—and resolves to find a different solution to his problem, all the while keeping wishes in reserve.

The stories are fascinating and rich in detail and color, like a Korda film gone riotous, taking you from palaces to sewers in vivid compositions that sometimes feel like an assault, sometimes a caress, all at the service of a debate between a scholar and all-powerful spirit about the dangers of service and promises and of love, none of which are for the faint of heart or shallow of character.

The heavy-lifting acting goes to Elba who is ever-present as narrator and djinn and clicks on all cylinders here with maximum effectiveness (as he can be when he's given something to work with). He's ably helped by Swinton's Alithea, who's so suffused with myth that she takes a djinn in stride and keeps her head about her to counter his arguments. Swinton's "read THAT story already" sensibility in her interactions has its own Buster Keaton-ish "squareness" and dead-pan humor that keeps the two engaging.** And the film is enriched by a wealth of actors with short CV's but have the proper look even if they don't have a word of dialogue to speak. It's a sumptuous banquet of a movie, filled with wonders for the eyes and ears and heart.

But, then, this film is right in my emotional wheel-house. I think of myself as a "cynical sentimentalist." I can be moved by a film of feeling even while I know that I'm being manipulated at 24 frames per second. At the same time, I have a jaundiced, less-romantic view of what "love" is. "Love" is a stew of hormones and serotonin, influenced by subconscious memory and sociological prodding. And marketed beyond all reasonableness. Given that description, Big-L "Love" is reduced to a form of mental illness, a chemical imbalance, like depression, only with the sparks dialed up to "11".

To counter that curmudgeonly view, I look to the Bible's analysis of "Love" (or "Charity" depending on your printing, which calms things down a bit) via Paul's First Letter to the Corinthians for a better understanding...at least, a more subdued one...that explores that "mystery" in a behavioral context, one that might explain such actions of love as self-sacrifice. And there, Three Thousand Years of Longing seems to have its Rosetta Stone, with its mentioning of fantastical elements of moving mountains and knowing all things, which the movie shows or implies. It certainly puts it head and shoulders above your standard Julia Roberts/J-Lo rom-com where the stakes and aspirations are considerably lower. And, for me, it makes it the love story of the year.

That Dr. Miller has made such a voluptuous film of it—and Tom Holkenburg's score even uses melody!—just makes it a wish fulfilled.

My three wishes would be that everybody go see this in a theater in a big screen for its visual splendor, its inventive use of ATMOS sound and the ability to be swept away. Seeing it at home or streaming would be so much dust.

 

*Someone came up with a great solution for this: "I wish you'd forget how to count..."

** In a recent podcast about the film that I participated in, there was much critical emphasis on Tilda Swinton's accent swerving. I haven't paid attention to accents at all since Sean Connery's Scottish burr coming out of an Arab Berber worked in The Wind and The Lion. One can be too Henry Higgins about these things, especially in a multi-national world where communications is no longer an issue. Is the performance good or is it a phonics test?