Three Thousand Years Of Longing – An Overambitious Spectacle (Early Review)

The latest effort from visionary director George Miller, Three Thousand Years Of Longing is engaging, interesting, stylistic and weird watch but it is never boring. Though the film starts off exceptionally, it also doesn’t quite hit the landing. While cinephiles and critics will surely find enough to enjoy here, on the other side, a large portion of the general audience are likely to find themselves waiting for the film to make any sense.

Three Thousand Years Of Longing follows a historian and lecturer named Alithea (Swinton) who while traveling to Istanbul for a conference, she visits a bazaar where she finds a small vase and unwittingly unleashes a Djinn (Elba) from his captivity. The Djinn grants Alithea three wishes, but she isn’t allowed to get to her wishes until the screenplay has seemingly seen fit to explore the various stories of the Djinn and how his bottle has found its way into Alithea’s care. The first two acts consist of stories that are easily the most engaging part of the film as these tales of magic and enchantment are fascinating and highly entertaining. Through these stories, audiences learn of about the Djinn’s former masters and how they used their wishes which led to their eventual demise. Once these stories come to an end and the story’s focus returns to its two main characters, the film unfortunately starts to falter.

Now when it comes to Swinton, she is a phenomenal actress and does a more than adequate job as Alithea, weighing the Djinn’s tales and subsequent wishes with the thoughtful consideration of an intellectual. Meanwhile, Elba brings depth to his genie-type character thanks to his deep and resounding voice, believably telling his stories about events from a millennia ago. A peculiar combination, Swinton and Elba are excellent actors in their own right but the two simply make for quite the riveting pairing. As the film begins to deteriorate, it just appeared to be more focused on telling its amusing side stories rather than developing any of its characters in a meaningful enough way for audiences to invest in them on an emotional level. That subsequent downward spiral eventually leads to an unsatisfactory climax that will only leave audiences with more questions than answers.

At the end of the day, Three Thousand Years Of Longing is a film about storytelling above all else as its screenplay delivers for the most part a fair share of entertainment over the course of its 100+ minute running time. Seeing how the bottle came to Alithea and how those the Djinn encountered over the years used their wishes was compelling to watch. That being said its screenplay, although fascinating, comes off as a bit too abstract for most general audiences, featuring plenty of holes. Through its premise, the film serves its agenda which involves covering such themes as humanity, greed, as well as offering lessons about love and happiness. This part of the film was by far the weakest by falling flat but most importantly, not fitting with its first two acts. Though on a technical level, the film offers some stylish visuals despite some rougher moments involving the Djinn. As a whole, it does have a cinematic quality to it though its whole is less than the sum of it’s parts.

For those who love cinema, Three Thousand Years Of Longing is something well worth checking out. While delivering a decently-entertaining watch, it is definitely a weird one.

(original review)

still courtesy of Elevation Pictures

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Russell Miller

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