It’s time to talk about George Miller—who’s had a fair amount of diversity in his filmography, be it the post-apocalyptic punk action of Mad Max, to, erm, dancing animated penguins. Well, variety is indeed the spice of life, and he’s mixing things up once again with a fantasy romantic drama film about mythology, love, and Idris Elba’s physique—it’s Three Thousand Years of Longing.
Tilda Swinton, a long regular of Wes Anderson, here plays a rather insular scholar of folklore who may or may not be receiving the occasional visit from supernatural beings. During a trip to Istanbul, she by chances stumbles upon a trinket that, of course, contains a powerful djinn—played with all the screen presence Elba can provide, which is needless to say a helluva lot. And so, in a sort of reverse Scheherazade scenario, our lady here finds herself the audience to a series of tales told by the djinn of his incarnations, all of which happen to be intertwined with his failed efforts at romance. From here, both beings attempt to figure each other out, and themselves.
For most of the film, Miller’s sense of visuals really shine through—we go from the ancient palaces of the Queen of Sheba herself to the halls of the Ottoman Empire, and whenever possible he stretches his sensibility in design and color. Even for relatively simple scenes, you have a real sense of grandeur injected the best he can—and combined with the gravitas of Elba, and Swinton’s intensity, well, there’s no denying I had fun with these. As he's done before, drama, laughs, and intensity are all woven together pretty well for the most part.
And so we go from the djinn dealing with monarchs to simple but intelligent servant girls—but that takes us into the latter parts of the flick, where things start to get shakier. Supposedly production was thrown around by COVID, which does explain why all of a sudden things get a lot more truncated—with one critical moment feeling more than a little rushed. After all we’ve been through, it just sort of stumbles forward to the end, which does feel a little disappointing, though given the circumstances, perhaps forgivable in this case.
For that reason you would have to temper your expectations going in, but thankfully, when it’s enjoyable, it’s a decent amount of fun—there’s an honesty to the way it homages tales of old while mixing them with the sensibility of the new, and our two leads bring their A-game the best they can all things considered. It may not be Miller’s best, but I commend him for the effort, so while this one’s a bit of a mixed bag, it’s certainly nothing that needs to be buried.
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