That’s an awful lot for any filmmaker to bite off, but then, this is George Miller we’re talking about, and where else does one go after making the ne plus ultra of action movies, “Mad Max: Fury Road”? Many will describe “Three Thousand Years of Longing” as a relatively small project for such a creatively ambitious director, who also made penguins dance (“Happy Feet”) and pigs talk (“Babe”). This one aims to uncover the meaning of movies - as director George Miller attempts to crack the all-encompassing formula for story, the way Albert Einstein did for theoretical physics. Some movies aspire to uncover the meaning of life.
Alithea Binnie, thinks she’s heard them all, so she’s ahead of the game when she suddenly finds herself at the center of a whopper, a modern-day fairy tale involving a djinn ( Idris Elba) ready and eager to grant her three wishes. In the brain-tickling eyesore that is “ Three Thousand Years of Longing,” Tilda Swinton plays a narratologist, which is to say, someone who studies stories.
