Three Thousand Years of Longing (dir. George Miller, 2022)

As the credits rolled on Three Thousand Years of Longing, I found myself wondering if director George Miller had undergone a Freaky Friday-style personality swap — or possibly demonic possession — by a wildly lustful North London mum going through a messy divorce. This sprawling exercise in righteous self-indulgence is Fifty Shades for people with a London Review of Books subscription. How Miller came, like his djinn protagonist, to realise the wildest, headiest desires of a certain caste of middle-aged women is a mystery in itself. This is an immaculately detailed fantasy, peaking with a flashback which pointedly informs us both that the protagonist’s ex-husband is a cheating dog, and oh, by the way, she went to Cambridge. An A.S. Byatt adaptation starring Tilda Swinton — the patron saint of weird British women — would be a treat in itself; this one blows author-insert fanfiction out of the water, as Swinton’s square-rimmed nerdiness and regional accent also enable her to pull Idris Elba.

Having acknowledged the glaringly problematic elements of a film which verges on supernatural sex tourism, it is time to confess that, as woman who also possesses large glasses and poor social skills, I enjoyed it immensely. Three Thousand Years of Longing hodge-podges a number of A.S Byatt stories into something halfway between the Arabian Nights and 90 Day Fiancé.

“Solitary narratologist” Dr. Alithea Binney (Swinton, sporting ginger bob suggesting some kind of academic Anna Wintour) rolls into Istanbul for a conference, with an extensive opening voiceover informing us in broad northern tones that she is cool with being single, totally not lonely, thanks very much. As anyone with a certain kind of female friend will know, this is a sign that she is definitely not cool with being single, and is about to ramble at you for two self-pitying hours. This much is gritty rather than magical realism; thankfully, Miller spices things up by giving her a djinn in a bottle from the Grand Bazaar (Elba), who materialises in her hotel room to grant three wishes.

In the spirit of the Bazaar, Three Thousand Years of Longing sets out its stall with all the tact and nuance of an aggressive hash vendor. From the opening moment where a small, digitally wizened Turkish entity accosts Alithea’s baggage trolley at the airport — leading to a discussion of whether he’s a djinn or an illegal immigrant — the message is clear. Orientalism is back, baby!

It’s tempting to look at this as a weird companion piece to Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road, another jaw-dropping fantasy reboot of primal themes and primal urges, bleeding into vestiges of modern life. Fury Road was a socially conscious testosterone orgy — cars, guns, guitars, concubines — marshalled by protagonists with a chemistry more spiritual than sexual or romantic. Three Thousand Years of Longing acts out an ‘intellectual’ rather than physical fantasy with just as much aplomb, putting an unapologetically horny Karen in the driver’s seat. Karen may be too strong, but as the unnamed Djinn paces around the hotel room with increasing frustration at her bureaucratic niggling, it really is hard not to think of 90 Day Fiancé’s infamous Big Ed and Rose. Big Ed is another socially awkward Caucasian singleton who gets set up with an implausibly attractive, ‘exotic’ partner, who tolerates their ineptitude with an obvious air of martyrdom. Big Ed may have been an overweight American in his fifties, and Rose a 23 year old Filipina, but at times the Djinn’s levels of forced enthusiasm make him seem a worthy candidate for reality TV.

Spliced around this core plot are a number of elaborate forays into the unabashed CGI softcore of noughties classics like Troy and 300 — relics of a time before the inbred-Scandi Game of Thrones look consolidated its chokehold on smutty ‘fantasy epics’. As Alithea obliges the Djinn to recount his past — which turns into an interrogation of all his exes, like some kind of nightmare Tinder date — we are treated to a carnival of hammams, harems, and an extensive subplot around an Ottoman fetish for fat ladies. The (literal) Queen of Sheba also puts in an appearance, getting such a spectacular railing from King Solomon that it ultimately causes the Djinn to end up in a security scanner at Heathrow Airport.

The thing is, the fantasy is so utterly, self-knowingly deluded that it’s rather charming. Rather than trying to make some kind of serious, social justice statement on fairytales which obviously clash with reality, but which have obvious, enduring imaginative appeal and joy, Three Thousand Years of Longing centres their fragility. Alithea — a deliberately grating character at times — is a study in accidental, well-meaning prejudice more than romantic love. Based on elements of A.S Byatt’s own biography, she is a deliberate symbol of loneliness, and the extent to which the human mind will go to make life bearable. And, it seems to suggest, as long as the fantasy is recognised as such — writ large in Elba’s rippling pecs and the mink-lined Ottoman palaces, just as much as in Alithea’s vision of curing her neighbours’ racism with hors d’oeuvres — it’s not harming anyone.