'Three Thousand Years of Longing' movie review: Djinn and bear it!

It’s Three Thousand Years of Longing and the near two hour runtime makes it a quick enough, half-way satisfying experience

Film: Three Thousand Years of Longing

Cast: Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Pia Thunderbolt, Aamito Lagum, Burcu Gölgedar

Director: George Miller

Rating: * * ½

Runtime: 108 mins

This film, scripted by George Miller and Augusta Gore (his daughter), based on a short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A.S. Byatt, postulates about a lonely scholar on a trip to Istanbul, discovering a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. Miller's first film since “Fury Road” (2015), this one is way too different from that or his other Oscar-nominated feature “Lorenzo’s Oil.”

The narrative is more narrated rather than visualised here. What we see though is pretty much colourful and magnificent. There are far too many stories being told, the plotting meanders and is verbose and delivered with facile character development. So, as an audience you tend to feel rather uninvolved despite the visual magnificence.

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Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a literary scholar/narratologist, who is a solitary creature by nature, is in Istanbul to present at a conference ‘to tell stories about telling stories.’ Alithea believes in the science. While Dr. Alithea addresses herself to resolving questions surrounding myths through the science, she finds herself at a loss when dealing with her own schizophrenic visions. Following her purchase of a handcrafted bottle, she uses her electric toothbrush to clean it. Soon enough an impressive looking Djinn(Idris Elba) swooshes out from the bottle in a purplish haze. Being a person rooted to the science she is sceptical of making that first wish. But the Djinn is quite formidable and persuasive. He tells her four tales that regale and are bound to get her to loosen up. The overarching plot gushes forth on the Djinn’s multi-generational existence.

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The narrative espouses mystical-philosophical ideas about the nature of storytelling, love and fate but it doesn’t feel very entertaining on the whole. Though sincere, original and serious, this film lacks a sense of humour to make light of a hovering tediousness caused by dull moments and overindulgent arches. The digital effects manage to create a compulsive real-fantasy marriage, though. It’s Three Thousand Years of Longing and the near two hour runtime makes it a quick enough, half-way satisfying experience.

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