"Three Thousand Years of Longing" Review

Eclectic director George Miller makes his return to the silver screen with “Three Thousand Years of Longing”. The film marks Miller’s first release since his Academy Award-winning “Mad Max: Fury Road” released in 2015. Unlike the “Mad Max” franchise, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is a much more fantastical, contemplative film.

“Three Thousand Years of Longing” stars the brilliant Tilda Swinton as Alithea Binnie and the versatile Idris Elba as Djinn (another term for a genie). While the film released to fairly positive reviews, the box office returns were not kind, making $4 million on a $60 million budget.

Simply put, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is not for everyone. The sprawling, time-jumping narrative follows Alithea and her growing relationship with Djinn. The film is an adult-centric fairytale that captures their relationship while also trying to balance multiple themes such as love, apathy and purpose.

Overall, I think that “Three Thousand Years of Longing” gets quite a few things right and quite a few things wrong. It felt like a mixed bag that really gets dragged down by a messy, repetitive first half.

As I mentioned earlier, I really enjoy Miller’s focus on human emotion here. Though this film is definitely open-ended in terms of interpretation, I interpreted “Three Thousand Years of Longing’s” message to be a simple yet poignant one: “Reject apathy and embrace love.” It’s a lovely sentiment that some need to hear. I think this is “Three Thousand Years of Longing’s” biggest strength, easily. However, it doesn’t truly embrace the theme until quite late in the film’s runtime. This occurs mainly due to the extended sequences explaining Djinn and his past.

Swinton and Elba are really good together here. Their chemistry is felt from their first encounter early on in the film. Through both their acting abilities and Miller’s writing, their equally similar and different idiosyncrasies are brought out throughout conversation. It was interesting watching these two characters, who quite literally come from worlds apart, find commonality and express the same wants and desires.

The set design and costuming here is also quite good. Given that the film has extended sequences with Djinn that are set during Biblical times, the Ottoman Empire and the 19th century, there are plenty instances of unique cultural items and clothing that are recreated well.

The biggest weakness that plagues “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is its repetitive, tedious first half. A majority of this half is spent on the aforementioned sequences throughout history with Djinn. Though these were interesting-enough sequences, it felt quite repetitive and simply not very important. The formula of “conversation-flashback-conversation” quickly became dull.

The visual effects that are used to display the magical elements of Djinn’s character are very hit or miss throughout the film. There are some very interesting visual effects that look great, the smoke that is released from his bottles, in particular, looked nice. However, there were some extremely distracting uses of green screen and VFX that looked strange at times.

For better or worse, I don’t see “Three Thousand Years of Longing” having a solid audience to appeal to. Outside of hardcore fairytale/fantasy fans and possible history buffs (given the extended sequences with historical figures), I don’t see many people connecting with or enjoying the film to the extent that Miller wanted.

Overall, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is a contemplative film that has its share of strengths and weaknesses. The strong thematic elements coupled with the chemistry between Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba are matched with the messy pacing/structure and repetitive sequences. I encourage any fans of the actors, as well as fans of fantasy, to watch this film. However, I don’t think the general audience will find much enjoyment out of it.

6/10