Three Thousand Years of Longing is a fantasy film that asks political questions-Sports News , Firstpost

George Miller’s new film Three Thousand Years of Longing is an enchanting love story between Alithea – a narratology professor from London (Tilda Swinton) – and an unnamed djinn (Idris Elba)who materializes in her fancy hotel room on a conference trip to Istanbul. This is not a hook-up, sorry to disappoint you; it is a storytelling soirée. Alithea, after all, is in the business of telling stories about stories to make her living, so this adventure is right up her alley. There is no magic carpet though. They have fresh linen, room service, and bath robes.

Why does a scholar who lives alone, is deeply immersed in the life of the mind, and desires no companionship, suddenly feel the pangs of loneliness? Is her heart being enslaved by the very djinn who is supposed to act at her command and fulfil three of her deepest wishes? Why does she want to cede control and stew in the longing the djinn has felt while waiting to be released from captivity? What makes her throw caution to the wind when she is aware not only of how narrative structures work but also the fact that a wish can turn into a curse? The film allows viewers to sit with these questions, introspect, and even wrestle with them.

Miller’s screenplay, co-written with Augusta Gore, is adapted from the title story of A S Byatt’s short story collection The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye (1994). It has cameos from famous personalities of the past such as the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), King Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad) as well as Suleiman the Magnificent (Lachy Hulme), Sultan Murad IV (Ogulcan Arman Uslu) and Prince Mustafa (Matteo Bocelli) of the Ottoman Empire.

Apart from philosophical concerns about how desires bring fulfilment and misery, the film looks at contemporary issues such as migration and the hostility towards non-white outsiders in the United Kingdom – a country that is built on imperialism and colonial plunder. However, it is also worth watching for the visual spectacle alone as the djinn’s stories take Alithea into narrative worlds across centuries and geographies far from today’s London.

The casting of a white woman as Alithea, and a Black man as the djinn, might make viewers think about the power dynamics in their relationship through the lens of race. Is the film reinforcing colonial and orientalist stereotypes by showing a Black person as a monstrous creature whose liberation depends on a white person’s benevolence? Is it urging us to think about ethical questions related to white scholars from the global North building a career out of researching the exotic and making that intelligible to their own academic contemporaries?

There is no definitive and inarguable conclusion that viewers can come to, especially because Alithea seems aware of racism when she calls out her neighbours in London for their bigotry. The passport privilege that enables people who look like Alithea to zip in and out of countries around the world, and the racism that prevents people who look like the djinn from getting a visa stamp on their passport, is cleverly brought out in a scene at airport security wherein Alithea tries to sneak him into her carry-on baggage. It is nothing but a tiny glass bottle. This could be interpreted as comment on Brexit or Europe’s response to the refugee crisis.

On the other hand, the film shows Turkey as a land steeped in myth and mystery whereas the United Kingdom is presented as rational, scientific and modern. Does narrative convenience end up legitimizing the distinction between the so-called First World and the so-called Third World? This question is worth mulling over because politics is coded into fantasy as well.

Alithea sees supernatural beings in the audience when she is delivering her conference talk. She goes shopping at an antique store, where she is taken up by a blue bottle called the nightingale’s eye that is supposed to hold secrets from a bygone era. The djinn pops out when Alithea rinses the bottle with running water flowing out of a tap in her hotel. Interestingly, the Turkish people around her seem to have none of these experiences. Is she yet another white woman coming to a foreign land to have her epiphany and find her purpose? Is the djinn symbolic of a project that she needs to take up in order to feel useful? These are important questions in a world where rich countries bomb poor ones, and then send humanitarian aid.

Why should one read so much into a film? Can one simply not watch it as a story about two people who meet accidentally and happen to like each other enough to spend the rest of their lives together? Isn’t one being unnecessarily harsh equating a white scholar with colonizers, or even scrutinizing Alithea the way one would analyse the shenanigans of Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte and Miranda in Abu Dhabi in Michael Patrick King’s film Sex and the City 2?

These questions are equally valid because viewers looking for entertainment and catharsis might want to give critical thinking some rest, and just dig into their caramel popcorn.

Chintan Girish Modi is a writer, journalist and educator tweeting @chintanwriting

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