A children’s story for adults, THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING has an old fashioned Saturday matinee vibe, a macabre Arabian night’s throwback rich in the exotic, erotic and grotesque.
Idris Elba plays a Djinn has been trapped in and out of various receptacles for three thousand years, so he’s pretty desperate to be free. When narratologist, Alithea Binnie, finds his current incarceration he implores her to make the three wishes that will emancipate his electromagnetic essence.
Knowing her fondness for fables, he seduces Alithea with stories of his encounters – The Queen of Sheba, for whom he has a love never requited, his guidance of a slave girl through the intrigues of the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, through to the 1850s, where he finds a hidden genius in Zefir, who has a deep longing for an understanding of the nature of the universe but is locked away like a bird in the great mansion of a wealthy merchant. The Djinn falls deeply in love with her, but it goes terribly wrong.
Tilda Swinton as Alithia Binnie, student of stories, finds this Djinn just the tonic.
Elba and Swinton are an intoxicating presence in this unabashed relish of storytelling, of magic and myth and memory. They are surrounded by a kaleidoscope of characters that colour this enormous canvas. In among the curious, bizarre, and weird, there’s a marvellous duo in present day London, Clementine and Fanny, played deliciously by Melissa Jaffa and Anne Charleston.
And look out for the comic cameo by director George Miller.
Miller co-wrote the screenplay with his daughter Augusta Gore, adapting a novella by A.S. Bryant. Shot by Oscar winning cinematographer, John Seale, edited by Oscar winnining editor Margaret Sixel, the production design is by Roger Ford, Oscar nominated for Babe, with costume design by Kym Barrett of The Matrix fame.
THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING is a little bottler.
