Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba in Three Thousand Years of Longing. Photo / Supplied
Three Thousand Years of Longing (108 mins) (R) In cinemas now
Directed by George Miller
Reviewed by Jen Shieff
George Miller, the director and co-writer of Three Thousand Years of Longing was a practising physician until he began producing movies, including two in the Mad Max stable (1985 and 2015,
with another recently announced), Lorenzo's Oil (1992), Babe (1998) and Happy Feet (2006 and 2011). He's versatile to say the least, and it's a good thing he's now turned to directing.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is an enchanting, enthralling epic, fascinating and thoroughly enjoyable. Miller's starting point was A.S. Byatt's novella, The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye, about a djinn with the ability to grant wishes. He's not one of those mean-spirited djinns, hell-bent on schadenfreude, hoping your wishes backfire, waiting to enjoy your misfortune. On the contrary, this djinn genuinely wants to grant your heart's desire.
Academic narratologist, an expert in the structure of narratives, Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) goes from her home in England to Istanbul as a keynote speaker at a conference. Even before she gets to her hotel, weird things start happening to her, but it's in her hotel room that she experiences the weirdest one of all. To her amazement, she releases a djinn (Idris Elba) from a grubby bottle she's bought in a bazaar. His vapour swirls, filling the room, until organic particles magically shape him into a magnificent, oversized human-looking being, with elf's ears.
Alithea takes an understandably long time to accept that the djinn is not just another trickster genie. Make a wish, he urges her. She wants for nothing, she tells him, but she must make a wish, he begs her, otherwise he's doomed to another thousand years stuck in a bottle. That's happened to him twice before, twice too often.
