THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING (15, 108 mins) Fantasy/Drama/Romance. Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, Aamito Lagum, Nicolas Mouawad, Ece Yuksel, Matteo Bocelli, Burcu Golgedar. Director: George Miller.
Released: September 2
STORYTELLING is firmly embedded in our cultures and the tradition has assumed myriad forms throughout history including cave painting, hieroglyphs, sculpture, theatre, manuscripts, tapestry, cinema and comic books.
Loosely adapted from AS Byatt's short story The Djinn In The Nightingale's Eye by Mad Max director George Miller and Augusta Gore, Three Thousand Years Of Longing is a visual effects-laden fantasy that trades automotive carnage in a futuristic Australia for dreamy contemplation in the company of a shape-shifting trickster from Middle Eastern folk tales.
The adventures of street urchin Aladdin, commonly associated with One Thousand And One Nights, urge extreme caution when it comes to wish-fulfilment.
The warning is heeded by Tilda Swinton's bookish heroine, a scholar of narrative structure in literary theory, who distils her outlandish odyssey to present-day Turkey in a format commonly associated with magic.
"My story is true. You're more likely to believe me if I tell it as a fairy tale," she coos in an opening voiceover, heralding the arrival of Idris Elba as a genie.
Performances play second fiddle to eye-popping visuals including blood-soaked battle sequences in the 17th-century Ottoman Empire and artfully staged bathhouse nudity.
Some of the digital trickery might wish for a polish and on-screen chemistry between the leads only achieves a polite fizz but Miller's directorial brio is wondrous.
Narratologist Alithea Binnie (Swinton) is a solitary creature by nature, summarising her disposition as "adequately happy and alone… by choice".
She travels from London to Istanbul for a conference, armed with a passion for the history of storytelling.
In the bustle of the Grand Bazaar, Alithea is drawn to a delicately twisted blue and white glass bottle, which the shopkeeper explains is a pattern known as the Eye of the Nightingale.
Alithea purchases the trinket and back at her hotel, in the same room that Agatha Christie supposedly wrote Murder On The Orient Express, she cleans dirt from the stopper with an electric toothbrush.
In a cloud of computer-generated smoke and static, an ancient Djinn (Elba) is unleashed and promises to grant three wishes.
Well-versed in cautionary tales, Alithea refuses the Djinn's tantalising offer and asks questions instead.
Consequently, the spirit spins three yarns, weaving together the romance of Sheba (Aamito Lagum) and Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad), the tragic ambitions of a concubine (Ece Yüksel) and her prince (Matteo Bocelli), and the frustrations of a Turkish merchant's wife (Burcu Golgedar).
Three Thousand Years Of Longing gallivants through time to underline a universal truth: love walks hand-in-hand with loss.
Infused with hope and beauty, Miller's dazzling yet flawed vision distils familiar tropes in technically ambitious flourishes, and couldn't wish for more lavish or lustrous production design.
A slice of Turkish delight.
RATING: 3/5
