Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

IMDb plot summary: A lonely scholar, on a trip to Istanbul, discovers a Djinn who offers her three wishes in exchange for his freedom.

Directed by George Miller. Starring Tilda Swinton, Idris Elba, and Erdil Yasaroglu.

Three Thousand Years of Longing stars Tilda Swinton as a narratologist and Idris Elba as the djinn she accidentally discovers on one of her travels. He tells her about the time he's spent trapped in a bottle and asks her to decide what wishes he can grant for her. George Miller picks such intriguing movies to tackle, and this one is definitely intriguing in light of his overall filmography. It's a softer, more fantastical story than he sometimes tells. It's hard to pinpoint what genre this is exactly, as it sort of dances around between romance and historical fantasy and magical realism, and it makes it equally hard for me to pinpoint how I feel about it. The central characters I find compelling and would happily just watch them discussing life in a hotel room together for a full two hours, and it's when the film steps away from that in the final third that I'm less certain it works. The overall effect is that of a beautifully begun but unfinished story, and as such it's hard for me to wrap my head around my view of it at as a whole.

How it entered my Flickchart:

Three Thousand Years of Longing > Forever Young

Three Thousand Years of Longing < Anna Karenina

Three Thousand Years of Longing < Die Hard

Three Thousand Years of Longing > You Can Count on Me

Three Thousand Years of Longing > Isle of Dogs

Three Thousand Years of Longing < Moonlight

Three Thousand Years of Longing > Death at a Funeral

Three Thousand Years of Longing > Nine Lives

Three Thousand Years of Longing < Kill Bill Vol. 1

Three Thousand Years of Longing > The Imposter

Three Thousand Years of Longing > I, Tonya

Three Thousand Years of Longing > American Outlaws

Final spot: #1470 out of 3746, or 61%.