Three Thousand Years Of Longing

''Three Thousand Years of Longing'' is a 2022 romantic fantasy drama film directed and produced by George Miller. Written by Miller and Augusta Gore, it is based on the 1994 short story " The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye" by A. S. Byatt and follows a djinn (Idris Elba) who is unleashed from a bottle by a professor ( Tilda Swinton) and tells her stories from his thousands of years of existence. The film is dedicated to Miller's mother Angela, as well as Rena Mitchell, relative of producer Doug Mitchell.

The film premiered out of competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2022. It was released theatrically in the United States on August 26, 2022, by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (via United Artists Releasing), and in Australia on September 1, 2022, by Roadshow Entertainment. It received generally positive reviews from critics, who praised its visuals and performances, but was a box-office bomb, grossing $20.3 million against a budget of $60 million.

Plot

Alithea Binnie is a British narratology scholar who occasionally hallucinates demonic beings. During a trip to Istanbul, Alithea purchases an antique bottle and unleashes the Djinn trapped within it. The Djinn offers to grant Alithea three wishes, as long as each one is truly her heart's desire, with the following exceptions: no wishing for more wishes, no wishing for immortality, and no wishing for an end to sin or suffering. However, Alithea argues that wishing is a mistake, accusing the Djinn of being a trickster. She says that when she was a child, she created an imaginary friend in the form of a young boy and even imagined his whole life (which she wrote in a diary) but decided to forget about him, fearing to be overwhelmed by her own imagination. In response, the Djinn proceeds to tell her three tales of his past and how he ended up trapped in the bottle.

In the first story, the Queen of Sheba, the Djinn's kin and lover, is wooed by King Solomon, who jealously imprisons the Djinn in a brass bottle which is cast into the Red Sea by a bird. Twenty-five centuries later the now-encrusted bottle is brought up from the ocean floor by fishermen and eventually is used as a stone in a wall.

The second story centers on Gülten, a concubine in the palace of Suleiman the Magnificent. After finding the bottle, Gülten wishes for Suleiman's son, Mustafa, to fall in love with her and subsequently wishes to bear his child. Hürrem Sultan, a favored concubine of Suleiman, schemes to have her own son on the throne and convinces Suleiman that Mustafa is conspiring against him; this results in Mustafa's murder. Despite the Djinn's attempts to save her, the pregnant Gülten is also killed on Suleiman's orders before she can make her final wish.

With the third wish ungranted, the Djinn wanders the palace invisibly for over 100 years, his bottle concealed beneath a stone in an unused bathing room. He almost captures the attention of Murad IV, who goes to war and becomes a ruthless ruler, later dying from alcoholism. His brother Ibrahim becomes the new sultan and develops a fetish for overweight concubines. His favorite among them, Sugar Lump, after finding the bathing room while wandering through the palace, discovers the bottle when she slips and falls on the stone, breaking it. The Djinn appears to her and desperately begs her to make the third wish. Thinking he is a trickster, Sugar Lump wishes for the Djinn to be re-imprisoned in his bottle at the bottom of the Bosporus.

In the final story, Zefir, the third wife of a Turkish merchant, is given the bottle after it is recovered in the mid-19th century from the belly of a gutted fish. Zefir wishes first for all-reaching knowledge, which the Djinn grants in the form of books, and later to perceive the world as djinns do. Despite the Djinn's growing love for Zefir and the fact she is now pregnant with his child, she feels increasingly trapped by his unwillingness to let her make a third wish, which would end their bond. To placate her, the Djinn offers to imprison himself in a new glass bottle whenever she wishes. However, during one such time, Zefir wishes to forget she had ever met the Djinn, leaving him imprisoned and unknown once again.

Alithea is moved by the story and realizes that she has fallen in love with the Djinn. For her first wish she asks for him to love her the way he had loved Zefir. They spend the night making love, and in the morning, the Djinn accompanies Alithea back to London. They settle into a routine where he either accompanies her as she works, or explores the new modern world, learning all of the new technological discoveries.

One day, Alithea discovers that the Djinn is becoming weaker due to the effects of the city's cell tower and satellite transmissions, which have been interacting with his electromagnetic physiology. Finding him turning to dust and comatose, she uses her second wish to get the severely ill Djinn to speak to her, and apologizes for using her wish to deny them the chance to fall in love naturally. She uses her third and final wish to free the Djinn to return to "The Realm of Djinn" where he belongs, as she realizes he does not belong in the world of humans.

Three years later, Alithea has written a book containing all the stories that the Djinn told her, like she once did with her childhood imaginary friend, and sees the now-healthy Djinn approaching her from across the park. Holding hands, they continue through the park and Alithea's narration reveals that he promises to return throughout her lifetime.

Cast

Production

It was announced in October 2018 that George Miller had set his next directorial effort, described as "epic in scope" and expected to begin filming in 2019. Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton were announced as cast members the same month. The film is based on A. S. Byatt's short story " The Djinn in the Nightingale's Eye."

In a July 2019 interview, Miller said that pre-production would begin in late 2019, and that filming would begin on March 2, 2020, between Australia, Turkey and the United Kingdom. Filming was delayed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and began in November 2020 in Australia.

Release

In May 2020, MGM (via United Artists Releasing) acquired the film's North American distribution rights, with Metropolitan Filmexport and Sunac Culture handling distribution in France and China respectively. Roadshow Entertainment handled the Australian distribution, while Entertainment Film Distributors handled distribution in the United Kingdom.

The film premiered out of competition at the 75th Cannes Film Festival on May 20, 2022, where it received a six-minute standing ovation. An activist protesting sexual violence perpetrated by Russian soldiers in Ukraine appeared at the premiere and stripped nude while screaming before being removed by Cannes security. The film's first trailer was also released that day.

The film's scheduled release date of August 31, 2022, in the United States, was moved up to August 26. It was released in Australia on September 1, 2022.

Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer and Warner Bros. Home Entertainment released the film for VOD on November 1, 2022, followed by a Blu-ray, DVD and 4K UHD release on November 15, 2022.

Reception

Box office

''Three Thousand Years of Longing'' grossed $8.3 million in the United States and Canada, and $12 million in other territories, for a worldwide total of $20.3 million, against a production budget of $60 million.

In the United States and Canada, it was released alongside '' The Invitation'' and '' Breaking''. It made $1.4 million on its first day and went on to debut with $2.9 million from 2,436 theaters on its opening weekend. '' Variety'' called it "a terrible result for a movie that's playing in thousands of theaters across the country", and noted that it would be one of the biggest box office bombs of 2022, with industry experts blaming lack of marketing and the wide-release strategy. ''TheWrap'', while acknowledging its box office underperformance, noted the film could still turn a profit for MGM after it went to streaming, as the company spent only $6 million on domestic distribution rights. In its second weekend, the film made $1.5 million (and a total of $1.9 million over the four-day Labor Day frame), dropping 47.1% and finishing 13th.

Critical response

Peter Debruge of '' Variety'' said: "These days, audiences are so savvy about the tricks at a filmmaker's disposal that the movie's greatest achievement is that it seizes our imagination (or perhaps that's our attention deficit disorder being so brusquely manhandled) and holds it for the better part of two hours, defying us to anticipate what comes next."

References

External links

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''Three Thousand Years of Longing'' (2022 Festival de Cannes Press Kit)
FilmNation Entertainment, (26 pp), May 2022

{{George Miller

2020s American films
2020s Australian films
2020s English-language films
2020s fantasy drama films
2020s romantic fantasy films
2022 fantasy films
2022 films
2022 romantic drama films
American epic films
American fantasy drama films
American romantic drama films
American romantic fantasy films
Australian epic films
Australian fantasy drama films
Australian romantic drama films
Australian romantic fantasy films
Cultural depictions of Suleiman the Magnificent
Depictions of the queen of Sheba in film
English-language fantasy drama films
English-language romantic drama films
English-language romantic fantasy films
Film productions suspended due to the COVID-19 pandemic
FilmNation Entertainment films
Kennedy Miller Mitchell films
Films about Solomon
Films about wish fulfillment
Films based on British short stories
Films based on fairy tales
Films based on One Thousand and One Nights
Films directed by George Miller (filmmaker)
Films produced by Doug Mitchell
Films produced by George Miller (filmmaker)
Films scored by Tom Holkenborg
Films set in 17th-century Ottoman Empire
Films set in hotels
Films set in Istanbul
Films set in London
Films shot in Australia
Films with screenplays by George Miller (filmmaker)
Frame stories
Genies in film
Magic realism films
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer films