Three Thousand Years of Longing - Review

 

When you make a movie as successful critically and commercially as “Mad Max Fury Road,” its understandable that your next project will likely have more creative freedom than what otherwise might be expected. That’s to say George Miller’s (“Happy Feet,” “Babe”) latest trippy, fantastical adventure “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is exactly the kind of weird, wonderful, and messy tale one expects from a director fully letting his ambitions run wild.

After accidentally unleashing an ancient Djinn, played by Idris Elba (“Molly’s Game,” “The Suicide Squad”), historian Alithea Binnie, played by Tilda Swinton (“Adaptation,” “Michael Clayton”), is granted three wishes from him. Worried about the potential twists from said wishes, Alithea refuses to make any, leading the Djinn to tell her the stories of his past masters in the hopes of easing her anxieties about making magical requests of him.

The film has quite a lot going on at any moment, and even a brief plot summary like that doesn’t get into nearly half of what the film has going on. Besides Swinton and Elba, the cast consists mostly of unknowns doing an absolutely fantastic job of filling out Miller’s fantastical world of Queens and Kings and mythological creatures. Highlights include Aamito Lagum as The Queen of Sheba and Burcu Gölgedar and Zefir, a genius inventor and one of the Djinn’s masters.

Elba and Swinton are both terrific, with Elba really taking on a larger-than-life persona due to both his narration and his portrayal of this ancient genie. He plays things up to portray this fantastical character, but without letting his performance ever get silly or veer into the cartoonish. Swinton maintains an oddball, awkward streak throughout her performance and its an easily likable character given her loneliness and the emotion put into the role.

The world of this adventure is absolutely fantastic, bringing this weird version of the past to life in a very Terry Gilliam-esque way, without sacrificing Miller’s love for the oddball. It’s a perfect blend of various filmmaking techniques, from visual effects to practical sets to some truly excellent cinematography from John Seale (“Mad Max Fury Road,” “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”), all draped in vibrant colors proving Miller can still serve up a feast for the senses even this late in his career.

However, the film’s plot and pacing aren’t nearly as fluid and fantastical. It’s a film that both embraces its segmented storytelling nature but also suffers from it. So much of the script, written by Miller and Augusta Gore, hops around from present day to past stories that when it finally stops hopping around and focuses on one story, it feels odd and out of place. Not that any of the stories are bad or lack Miller’s specific touch or attention, it’s just the natural byproduct of jumping around so many times for so much of the film. It also doesn’t help that this is a film that’s quite deliberately paced, moving at its own speed. It doesn’t feel longer than it is, but it’s certainly not a quick trip either.

Where “Three Thousand” succeeds with nary a fault is in the clear big beating heart of the picture. This is one of those big messy movies that a director gets to make once they’ve gotten to a certain point in their career, where it might not all work perfectly, but the central emotional core of the film is so solid that it makes up for a lot.

Miller has crafted a love letter to the simple act of telling stories and to what telling stories can tell us about the storyteller. It’s the big gooey emotional core at the center of everything and it really works. It’s impossible to say if it’ll win over everyone or make up for the film’s issues for everyone, but at the end of the day, this is a film about storytellers, made by a storyteller, that’s a love letter to telling stories that will most likely be the most beloved by those who love telling stories.

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” is a big, emotional, messy film. Elba and Swinton are great, as is the rest of the ensemble cast, all putting on some fantastic and fantastical stories in gorgeous locations shot with excellence and bursts of color at every moment. It’s a shame it doesn’t all feel as precise or smooth as it could have, but this is a film made with its heart on its sleeve and a grand story to tell, for better or worse. 4/5