3 out of 5

Directed by: George Miller

Stories about the nature of storytelling are almost always, in some way, setting themselves up for failure. At a high level – and I suppose this would apply to any narrative – you can claim there’s either a point to the experience or not a point, and with the latter being inherently self-defeating (which, er, can be the point, I suppose), the former then has a task of making that point worth it. And because the road of distancing the narrative from itself has been taken, things can’t be resolved by simply rescuing the princess or finding the MacGuffin; now the road must lead toward grander goals: big, emotional things.

Certainly there have been successes at this, but again, I’d maintain there’s some inherent failure: emotions are an individual thing, and trying to convince viewers / readers of their relative values without a tangible The End is… difficult.

George Miller’s 3,000 Years of Longing tries to skip a beat by directly examining the value of storytelling, and essentially positing that all life is exactly that – storytelling – and thus what makes us real. The journey to that conclusion is absolutely thrilling, without ever relying on the bombastics of the director’s action fare like Mad Max; it is simply enthralling visually and narratively. …Up to a point, and perhaps a purposeful one: when the final thirty minutes or so try to combine the fantasy of a Djinn (Idriss Elba) and a “narratologist,” Alithea (Tilda Swinton), meeting and exchanging tales in a hotel room in Istanbul with the reality of returning to a more bustling and less hotel-bathrobe laden London, and trying to continue their stories. The movie slows, and stretches to find a way to maintain its point without becoming maudlin. And is not entirely successful. It needs a The End that it’s already talked itself out of.

There are hints at this throughout. Alithea’s insistence that she loves her solitary lifestyle is cinema bait for being moraled into believing in the power of togetherness and love, and Miller (co-scripting with daughter Augusta Gore) I’d say tries to lampshade this, but the tone of the film also demands that it never become a farce or parody of itself; trying to remain legitimate with its tone proves to be its unsettling balance – occasionally brilliant, in downplaying the more romanticized aspects of having a handsome genie pop up in the lonely lady’s life, but then stumbling when needing to leverage that into more directly impactful moments.

Setting this aside, Three Thousand Years helps to underline something that should never have been in doubt: Miller is a fantastic filmmaker, able to stretch around mood and broad, big ideas, even if the exact content may not be as expansive as all that. Employing high and low angles and long takes, Alithea tells you up front she’s presenting her story as a fairy tale, and that’s what we experience, but without the overdone trappings of, like, Tim Burton (or even Terry Gilliam, whose Baron von Munchausen often came to mind) – just like with Fury Road, Miller is able to show us the most insane visuals, and does them cinematic justice, but doesn’t dawdle: these are details in the whole; steps in the tale. A fairy tale has the fantastical as the norm, and this is the world of the movie, using the bridge of cutting back to the Djinn and Alithea in their hotel room to juggle the retold classic tales of Sheba and Scheherazade with the relative sterility of the modern day, as the genie tries to explain his history of being stuck in a bottle to Alithea, hoping to convince her to make her wishes and set him free, when she is suspicious of him – as in all stories containing wishes – of being a trickster.

DP John Seale and editor Margaret Sixel are also key components here, color and lighting and framing and pacing tools in the movie’s toolbox to keep us glued to the screen, despite maybe questioning its narrative details. I’d also say Tom Holkenberg is the secret VP: this is Junkie XL, who rocked out on Mad Max, but does the most delightfully understated ambience throughout the movie.

So there’s something ultimately meta about a story about storytelling being, in part, not the most consistently or convincingly told story, but told very, very well. You are watching and listening, enraptured, while also kinda knowing it’s bullshit. That doesn’t defeat the inevitable dissatisfactions of such tales, but it’s a good way to smooth them out.