The world George Miller creates is impressive, but his message is lacking.
The world George Miller creates is impressive, but his message is lacking.
A t the screening I attended for 3000 Years of Longing, director and co-writer George Miller appeared onscreen before the opening credits and thanked us for seeing it on the big screen, “where it was meant to be seen.” And it was — though perhaps not in the way that fans of his last film, Mad Max: Fury Road, might expect, or even prefer. Fury Road was a big-screen sort of movie because of the way it swept (dragged, launched, etc.) the viewer into its world and action. A sensational-spectacular sort of way. But this? This was more sumptuous-fascinating, an invitation to immerse and explore, like a wonderfully illustrated moving-picture book. (“Moving picture” — that has a nice ring to it. Maybe it’ll catch on.)
Miller isn’t taking you for a ride here; he’s sitting you down for a story. A story about stories, as it happens, told by a student of stories, and featuring a storyteller. My daughter recently pulled down my old copy of The Illustrated Junior Library’s Arabian Nights, and the format — a book of stories told by one of its characters — felt understandably familiar. Because one of my notes while watching was “a children’s story, but with sex.” (The more sophisticated way to render this is “an adult fairy tale,” which I suspect has been done elsewhere.)
But while there are Djinns aplenty in The Arabian Nights, the storyteller is human: the clever Wife Scheherazade, delaying her execution by keeping up the curiosity of her husband, the king. Here, the Djinn tells the story, and the story is his own: How the Djinn Got His Bottle. The shift is clever, because a Djinn is a creature “made of subtle fire” instead of flesh and blood, and so his stakes feel somehow higher — the way a superhero’s travails seem somehow more significant because he’s a superhero. Miller gets a bit explicit about this, giving us an academic presentation near the film’s outset that includes a slide brimming with superfolk, followed by the presenter’s declaration that “all gods and monsters outlive their original purpose and are reduced to metaphor.” But even as she says it, an angry Djinn glares at her from the audience, and she collapses.
The Djinn is played by Idris Elba, who has the right bearing and presence for the part, and the right sort of velvet-rich voice for the film’s great swaths of narration. Alithea, the academic, assures us at the outset, “My story is true, but you’re more likely to believe it if I tell it like a fairy tale.” She is played by Tilda Swinton, who has the right bearing and presence for her part as well — a strength drawn from intelligence and experience, resulting in something that isn’t quite coldness or hardness, but shows hints of both. She describes herself as “adequately happy and alone,” a widow of a marriage the remains of which seem to be wholly contained by a cardboard box in her basement. Her expression upon releasing the Djinn into her hotel room (the one where Agatha Christie wrote Death on the Nile) is masterly: betraying nothing, assessing everything.
The Djinn, of course, offers her three wishes, after setting out the necessary conditions. (No eternal life, no wishing for more wishes, no absolution of sin, etc. Notably, however, he doesn’t keep to the prohibition in Disney’s Aladdin about not being able to make anyone fall in love.) But academic Alithea is hesitant to accept: first because she knows better — “If a story is about wishes, it’s a cautionary tale” — and second because, well, a wish is your heart’s desire, and nothing comes to mind in that department. (Thanks, modern society!) But the Djinn needs her to do her part, and so he begins to relate his own story, about his own heart’s desire, and how it landed him in his tiny prison. It passes the time they have together, and who knows, it might just prove inspirational. Stories, as we have been informed, are how we “make existence coherent,” and how we “make meaning,” and “there are those who need to believe in them.” Indeed.
And here is where things get picture-booky in grand fashion (and also sexier than most picture books). It turns out our Djinn was enamored of the Queen of Sheba, herself part Djinn, as evidenced by the thick coat of lustrous black hair on her legs. But Sheba is won over by a visit from King Solomon — the one who asked God for wisdom, and also, apparently, a magic instrument with self-mending strings and self-playing accompaniment — so much so that she has her attendants shave the aforementioned hair. The scene is brief but remarkable. Perhaps because of the queen’s otherworldly beauty, perhaps because of the Djinn’s storytelling, the shaving seems less a fantastic makeover and more of a poignant loss. You’re throwing away your glory for him? Her legs are left conventionally beautiful, but no longer fascinating — a triumph of shifted perspective. No wonder the Djinn objects — and no wonder Solomon takes steps to silence those objections.
On and on the stories roll, from an ambitious concubine of Suleiman the Magnificent, to a less ambitious concubine of the sultan Ibrahim, to the curious wife of a Turkish merchant. There is no clear progression, no fable-strength moral, just a gorgeous narrative exploration of love and war and time and chance, influenced here and there by a nudge from the divine Djinn. And eventually, it’s enough to inspire Alithea to make her first wish.
And here is where things stop being picture-booky and get all present-day and prosaic. Here is where the story stops being a children’s story with sex and starts being a grown-up engagement with The World As It Is. It’s not that the movie gets bad or boring; there are any number of people, I’m sure, who would argue that here is where it gets really interesting. How will the magic make its way in mundane modernity? It’s just that it feels a little bit like a vegetable course being served after dessert. There’s a problem that grows to a crisis, and there is growth and resolution. And that’s fine. But it doesn’t help that the ending is downright sensible, not after all the mad grandeur we’ve just glimpsed. I left impressed by Miller’s world but unconvinced by his message. I wanted, even longed for, more.
