I went to see
Three Thousand Years of Longing yesterday, and had the whole theater to myself, apart from two elderly ladies who were apparently playing some porno cell-phone game and talking loudly about how one guy reminded them of an ex-husband of one of them, who she saw
Jaws with when it came out. I could almost get most of their conversation, it was kind of entertaining, but I worried they'd keep it up once the film started - thankfully, they didn't.
It's disappointing to see this film faring poorly at the box office; perhaps not surprising though. These days anything that doesn't fall into one of just a few distinct and explainable-in-ten-words categories isn't an easy sell, and while this is "fantasy" (which is popular), it's not fantasy of the battles-with-dragons kind, it's not "epic". It's a callback to the worlds of the Arabian Nights, specifically to some of the early Cinemascope fantasies of the 50s, and it's about the nature of storytelling itself - none of that is going to bring in the kiddies. And neither is the romantic element, something else that's largely missing in box-office successes in America these days. And while Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba and director George Miller are all pretty big names, it's clear that in 2022 you pretty much have to be Tom Cruise to bring people in just on the strength of a name. But it's too bad, because it's a pretty good film - in fact for the first half to two-thirds, I thought it had the potential to be a great one. British narratologist (not a term I've heard before - let's say Professor of myths) Tilda Swinton is in Istanbul for a conference, and while shopping in the Grand Bazaar she's drawn to a particular little glass vessel, which upon cleaning in her hotel suite pops open to reveal a room-filling Djinn (Elba). Over most of the rest of the film, he tells her stories about how he was trapped, freed, and re-trapped over the past three millennia; she, being wise to the ways of words and mythical creatures, is loathe to present him with a wish, let alone three, because she knows how they tend to turn out, and our self-reflective and somewhat depressive Djinn only adds to her negativity on this point. But something changes in both of them as the Djinn's story comes to the present, and they are off to London to live together at the end, until the Djinn's place in the modern world is disrupted by forces too powerful even for him. Choices are made, wishes have to be considered, and a happy ending seems necessary - and deserved. I think the last was a bit wonky and muddled - though I like where the story ends up, I'm not sure the way it got there once the scene shifts it's place was the best way to do it. But the Djinn's tales are marvelous, the use of color and production design are excellent, and most of all, given that this is basically a 2-person film, the two stars are just wonderful together. I would love to see these two in something simpler and non-fantastic, actually, like a semi-comedic Mike Leigh film, perhaps as a long-married, loving but eternally squabbling couple. In any case, they made the film absolutely worth watching, and I think for anybody interested in the origins of myths and in the film's early antecedents - Scheherazade being only the most obvious of many - it's worth it.
A side note for those who tend to complain about language - one thing I really liked is that, while Elba narrates his stories in English (with an unplaceable "foreign" accent which I think is appropriate), much of the film is in original languages - he starts out in Greek when the bottle is opened but quickly learns Swinton's language, and then we proceed through the ages hearing the language of Solomon and Sheba (?? early Hebrew, I dunno) and Turkish, and bits of other languages I think. I really liked the way this was done, it certainly gives it more of a feel of "authenticity", if that's a meaningful term in a story about a 3000-year-old djinn.
- not that either is particularly good to begin with IMO. Am sort of looking forward to Leitch's film simply because, oh, it looks better than the other schlock I've been avoiding. But I didn't much like Atomic Blonde or Hobbes & Shaw so my expectations will be very low.
