108 mins |
Rated
M (Violence, offensive language, sex scenes & nudity)
Directed by George Miller
Starring Idris Elba, David Collins, Tilda Swinton
Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an academic -- content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn (Idris Elba) who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both....
As if unleashing all the pent-up narrative impulses tamped down for the hard-bitten minimalism of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Australia’s proudest son George Miller returns to Cannes’ out-of-Competition section with a sumptuous banquet of storytelling in service of storytelling. “Three Thousand Years of Longing” compresses eons of heartbreak, happenstance, and hope into a hotel room tête-à-tête that then re-blooms to the size of the universe, a parable both titanic and intimate in scale as it negotiates one woman’s complacent solitude against the welfare of mythologies dating back to the cradle of civilization. In our technology-besotted present, the depth of human knowledge has degraded creation tales to the point that they’re mere fodder for superhero comics, but a chance encounter with the fantastic will reinvest a bit of awe in a world plagued by numbing manmade affliction." - The Playlist
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Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is an academic -- content with life and a creature of reason. While in Istanbul attending a conference, she happens to encounter a Djinn (Idris Elba) who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. This presents two problems. First, she doubts that he is real and second, because she is a scholar of story and mythology, she knows all the cautionary tales of wishes gone wrong. The Djinn pleads his case by telling her fantastical stories of his past. Eventually she is beguiled and makes a wish that surprises them both....
As if unleashing all the pent-up narrative impulses tamped down for the hard-bitten minimalism of “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Australia’s proudest son George Miller returns to Cannes’ out-of-Competition section with a sumptuous banquet of storytelling in service of storytelling. “Three Thousand Years of Longing” compresses eons of heartbreak, happenstance, and hope into a hotel room tête-à-tête that then re-blooms to the size of the universe, a parable both titanic and intimate in scale as it negotiates one woman’s complacent solitude against the welfare of mythologies dating back to the cradle of civilization. In our technology-besotted present, the depth of human knowledge has degraded creation tales to the point that they’re mere fodder for superhero comics, but a chance encounter with the fantastic will reinvest a bit of awe in a world plagued by numbing manmade affliction." - The Playlist
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