'Three Thousand Years of Longing': Djinn and not enough juice
George Miller's 'Fury Road' follow-up has big ideas but can't get the small stuff right
Itās Miller Time
From the jump, Lifting Fogās mission has been to sidestep any subjects you might actually want to read about (āHouse of the Dragonā, āDonāt Worry Darlingāās press tour) in favor of stuff you might charitably describe as āniche,ā and less charitably āshit Iāve never heard of and would not seek out.ā And itās in that spirit that we today open a discussion of George Millerās latest movie, āThree Thousand Years of Longingā!
Iāve gotta say, I feel a kinship with Miller. Heās got great hair, first of all, which Iām self-confident enough to proclaim I also possess. In his interviews, he undercuts deep cultural aptitude with refreshing Australian cheekiness. (Iām not Australian, but if I were, would hope to be considered ācheeky.ā) Oh, and the dude seems almost clinically incapable of doing what you want him to for any sustained amount of time.
Millerās filmography is positively festooned with amazing, genre-defining work, from āBabeā (which he wrote and produced) to āMad Maxā and āMad Max: Fury Roadā ā the kind of movies any sane studio head/career consultant would just encourage him to keep making, ad nauseam, with slight Marvel-style tweaks along the way. But Miller canāt leave well enough alone! Bored of pastoral sweetness, he channels urban depression in āBabe: Pig in the Cityā. What was just the right amount of penguins in āHappy Feetā becomes way, way too many penguins in āHappy Feet 2ā. Miller has never met a successful movie he didnāt want to then follow up with something seemingly random. Itās not Soderberghās āone for them, one for meā moviemaking ethos; itās the shrugging guy emoji.
And so, seven years after the runaway, Oscar-winning success of āFury Roadā, Miller has followed up that high-octane tale of survival and redemption in the orange-scorched wastelands forā¦ a quiet lilā movie about Tilda Swinton falling in love with a genie.
You gotta rub me the right way
Idris Elba plays the djinn, letās use proper terminology here, who prior to being unknowingly released by lonely British narratologist (!) Alithea Binnie (!!), had spent hundreds of years trapped in a glass bottle. Actually thousands of years, in various bottles, imprisoned out of jealousy or regret or even sheer forgetfulness. Does Djinn want to be free? Maybe. Mostly he just wants to do his damn job, i.e. grant three wishes, which the wish-averse Alithea is making impossible. So to inspire her, Djinn regales her (and US) with a plethora of āArabian Nightsā-style stories ā sad, sexy, and everywhere in-between. Eventually, Alithea decides she does wish for something after all: that d(jinn).
Itās a strange film! On the one hand, it wants to unpack1 these big ideas about LONGING and STORY and AGENCY, which it does largely through Djinn's tales: grand set-pieces taking us from the courts of the Queen of Sheba and Suleiman the Magnificent to the last days of the Ottoman Empire. It's epic stuff, beautifully shot, conjuring 'Time Bandits' or even budget-'Cleopatra'.
But when weāre not in those tales (which account for half the runtime) and itās just Djinn and Alithea politely conversing in the Agatha Christie Room of Istanbulās Pera Palace Hotelā
āsome part of you wonders if, idk, maybe you could wish for the version of this movie that starred Cameron Diaz as the harried professional and Will Smith as the genie2 (sheāll hide his identity by calling him āGeneā) who teaches her how to love and maybe even rap, released by Miramax into a semi-crowded Thanksgiving ā97 weekend.
Not that Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton (Iām so tempted to call her āTidris,ā for symmetry) donāt harness a certain middle-aged sexual charge! They DO, and you may find yourself desirous of one or both of them in this movieās 108 minutes. But for all weāre told the magic of Djinnās stories has stirred something in Alithea, breathed life into previously inert parts of her heartā¦ I canāt say I ever felt it. āThree Thousand Yearsā fairy-tells when it needs to fairy-show3.
And for my final wishā¦
Movie reviews are a story. I mean yeah, theyāre a story about another story (and inherently less culturally valuable than the latter), but they themselves weave a tale4. Sometimes itās about expectation versus reality; other times itās about the love triangle between art, artist, and spectator. Hell, I'm pretty sure Ain't It Cool News' Harry Knowles once described a heart attack he was having mid-screening, which far eclipsed whatever he had to say about 'Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within'.
I inhale movie reviews the way I would any good movie, sometimes to the point they -- much like a genie!! -- actually trick me. Did I like the movie āFrost/Nixonā in 2009? No, not at all, I thought it was somehow overcooked and plodding at the same time. But then I got my A.O. Scott on, my David Edelstein on, my Stephanie Zacharek on (itās 2009, these references all check out) ā and hours later Iāve now read enough beautifully composed reviews to convince myself otherwise.
The other day, my āThree Thousand Yearsā post-mortem took me to Joshua Riveraās Polygon review:
There are films that change the nature of the air you breathe after you watch them, as a motif from its score loops in oneās mind and the color of the world outside the theater doesnāt quite live up to what was seen on screen. Three Thousand Years of Longing is one of those films, a story about stories ā a fraught genre prone to self-importance ā that isnāt solely interested in their magic as a cloying, unifying force. They are more powerful than that. More dangerous than that. And it turns out that there are few more satisfying ways to explore this than by watching two people who believe they know all there is to know about stories trying to guess how this one ends.
I felt NONE of that shit watching the movie but, the way he describes itā¦ I kind of wish I did? Hell, maybe I did? The themes heās describing so well are there, uh-huh, and maybe I misread the hotel scenes a bit. After all, thereās power in their mundanity, relative as it is to the Djinnās stories. And, like, you need that juxtaposition to sell the transformative powers of love. Right?
Okay, fine, so maybe the movieās better than I thought. Maybe I liked it. Maybe I loved it?
Beholdā¦ the power of storytelling
Two other high-concept but low-key movies to read about!
After Yang: Colin Firthās mustache processes death of family robot
A Ghost Story: Casey Affleck (who DIES, if you donāt like him) hurtles through time and space in a bedsheet ghost costume
un-BOTTLE, Henning, it was right there
Obviously Will Smith played, you know Genie in the 2019 āAladdinā remake. Although in many ways Hitch is also a genie-like character
I truly apologize for, however intentional, the worst sentence I have ever written
Okay THIS is now the worst sentence Iāve ever written