Veering from Mad Max, George Miller debuts Three Thousand Years of Longing at Cannes
The unveiling of Three Thousand Years of Longing had most Cannes festivalgoers on the edge of theirs seats. What would George Miller conjure up this time? Could the 77-year-old filmmaker match the propulsive thrill of Mad Max: Fury Road?
It’s taken a lot of time and a good deal of yearning for Australian director George Miller to make Three Thousand Years of Longing, his long-awaited follow-up to Mad Max: Fury Road.
Miller premiered Three Thousand Years of Longing over the weekend at the Cannes Film Festival, the culmination of a journey that began 20 years ago when Miller first read the A. S. Byatt story upon which the film is based, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.
But it was only when frictions over the profits from Fury Road — Miller’s operatic action opus — opened a window that the time came for Three Thousand Years of Longing.
“After we wrote it, it was really a question of when to do it,” Miller said alongside his stars, Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton, shortly before the film’s premiere in Cannes. “It was lucky, actually. We got into litigation with Warner Bros. on Fury Road and it meant that, hey, we can bring this to the fore.”
The unveiling of Three Thousand Years of Longing had most Cannes festivalgoers on the edge of theirs seats. What would Miller conjure up this time? Could the 77-year-old filmmaker match the propulsive thrill of Mad Max: Fury Road?
That film, which Miller is preparing to revisit with the prequel Furiosa, made its blistering premiere in Cannes seven years ago on its way to an armful of Oscars, $374 million in box office receipts and a place on plenty of best-century lists.
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The answer, it turns out, is a singular blend of fantasy epic and chamber-piece drama that goes to the heart of Miller’s own feelings about storytelling. The film, which MGM will release on Aug. 31, was scripted by Miller and his daughter, first-time screenwriter Augusta Gore. In it, Swinton plays a narratologist named Alithea Binnie who is visiting Turkey for a conference on how science has replaced mythology.
After Alithea buys an old bottle at the Grand Bazaar and scrubs it in her hotel sink, a wish-granting djinn (Elba) appears, filling up the room. A lengthy and intimate conversation ensues, in which he tells her about his previous masters throughout the last 3,000 years. Using computer-generated imagery, Miller blends mythology and modern world in a contemplative, history-spanning fairy tale that resolutely believes in magic.
