Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

September 17, 2022 5:08 AM

A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.
posted by ellieBOA (13 comments total)

Oh! I'm excited for this! I thought it wouldn't be out for ages, but what a nice surprise.
posted by Acari at 6:38 AM on September 17, 2022

Saw it a few weeks ago and maybe didn't love it quite but liked it a lot. Swinton and Elba are of course great and the film looks incredible, I'm just not sure what it was trying to say. I'd like to see it again and I'm sad that it came and went from theaters so quickly.
posted by octothorpe at 8:00 AM on September 17, 2022

I found this movie deeply problematic. This essay addresses some of it.
posted by miss-lapin at 8:27 PM on September 17, 2022 [10 favorites]

The movie doesn't understand how monstrously cruel Alithea's wish is? We must have seen different movies. The one I watched spent 2/3 of the runtime laying it out for you.
posted by figurant at 9:24 AM on September 18, 2022 [3 favorites]

I thought it was strange that a number of very important roles in the film, including Sheba, Gulten and Zefir, were uncredited, and some actors like Melissa Jaffer are not even listed in Imdb.
posted by gubo at 6:13 AM on September 19, 2022 [2 favorites]

It's funny to think of the movie ending with Tilda Swinton being scolded for her crimes... the cinematic equivalent of the "no growth" tweet. Isn't there anyone here for love?
posted by kingdead at 8:22 AM on September 19, 2022

I liked the movie, but he does spend a lot of time begging her. The thing that jolted me is that one angle of the film could be about the inhumanity of solitary confinement.
posted by Nancy Lebovitz at 12:52 AM on September 20, 2022

When I first read about the movie it seemed pretty inevitable that the characters either end up falling in love or develop a friendship. And then the story did not seem to be developing that way. There wasn't really anything between them, the Alithea character was so bland. He was telling her his story and we were rooting for him to finally be free and then this wish... was baffling. My first impression was they just didn't really have any idea what else to do with this movie but for me it was pretty jarring. There was nothing for this "love" to be about, a Djinn having tea and cookies in the afternoon. The scene with the neighbors where she was portrayed as an ally when she was treating him like her toy was honestly cringey.
posted by M. at 2:08 AM on September 20, 2022 [2 favorites]

Structurally, this was kind of an enjoyable movie followed immediately by half of a middling movie that had like five endings. Dunno, really, how it could have been redeemed, but it definitely felt like it had promise that it failed to live up to.

Still, the stories of the past were mostly entertaining enough.
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:37 AM on October 2, 2022

Also wow that essay linked above completely nails the thematic issues with the movie that didn’t really sit right with me. I find myself wondering about things like how good Idris Elba’s Turkish was, and occasionally wondering things like, hey, why is there seemingly no Arabic being spoken in here, anyway
posted by DoctorFedora at 12:43 AM on October 2, 2022 [1 favorite]

I think the crux of the story was supposed to be that Swinton's first wish is wicked. She tells us the whole movie that wishes in stories are never good, never work out right. And she gives a speech at the end about how her wish was all wrong, that by wishing for love she made real love impossible.

But we don't get any hints of this from his perspective and the fact that he comes back in the end also completely undercuts any sense of horror and wrongness, of a kidnap victim falling in love with his captor.
posted by straight at 6:32 PM on June 20, 2023

I watched this a few nights ago and was shook. But am I overlooking any undeniable proof that it wasn't all in her head, like Enzo?
posted by infinitewindow at 6:43 AM on June 27, 2023

When Alithea introduces the djinn to her neighbors, they both look up and greet him.
posted by mbrubeck at 10:10 PM on September 24, 2023 [2 favorites]