Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022, dir. George Miller, US & Australia) by Kymm Zuckert
When this film ended, I turned to Blake and said, “That was enchanting!” which is a little on the nose for a film about enchantments, but I have listened to several reviews since where people used that same word, so perhaps we were all enchanted into it?
What do you think of first when you think of the director George Miller? Many will say the Mad Max films. He’s currently working on Furiosa, the direct sequel to Fury Road, so those films are not merely in his far past but his immediate present. If you only think of Miller as a post-apocalyptic practical effects action guy, this new film might seem a big change of pace, but if you remember that he also did Babe, Happy Feet, and The Witches of Eastwick, it’s less of a stretch. He has a bright, magical side as well as an everyone-out-for-themselves-and-we-need-guzzoline side.
Three Thousand Years of Longing is one of those magical ones.
Althea (Tilda Swinton), is a scholar of stories, fairy tales, and myths. She is a person who leads a solitary life, but is content. She goes to Istanbul to lecture, and while she is there, she buys an old glass bottle. Now, I don’t know what you think would happen in such a film when someone gets a glass bottle and pries it open, but I’m pretty sure the fact that a Djinn comes flying out in the person of Idris Elba should be a shock to precisely nobody!
He grants her three wishes, as is traditional, and tells her that they can’t be any old wishes, they must be her heart’s desire. She counters that she is perfectly happy as she is, and thus has no wishes. Also, being a scholar of stories, she knows a lot about devious Djinn tricking people into making bad or foolish wishes. The Djinn counters that he’s not like that, and he needs her to make the wishes.
And since this is a film in the fashion of 1001 Arabian Knights, with a scholar of stories and a Djinn full of stories, the largest and best chunk of the film is the Djinn telling Althea about how he kept getting trapped in bottles, usually through love and desire.
Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, two of the finest actors living, would be just lovely to watch carefully reciting the phone book, but put them in this story of centuries, made by this great writer/director, and you have an absolute treat of a film, and great to see on the big screen.
It’s a story about two lonely beings finding a way to be less lonely. And it’s magical.
Kymm Zuckert is an actor/writer/native Angelino. When Kymm was a child, her parents would take her to see anything, which means that sometimes she will see a film today and say, “I saw that when I was eight, I don’t remember any of that inappropriate sex stuff!” Check out her entire 365 day blog @ https://365filmsin365days.movie.blog