Three Thousand Years of Longing, confirms Miller as born storyteller

A wicked sense of humour pervades Three Thousand Years of Longing, which confirms George Miller as a born storyteller.

Idris Elba in Three Thousand Years Of Longing

Three Thousand Years of Longing (M)
In cinemas
★★★★½

One of the most thrilling experiences I enjoyed in a cinema during my childhood was a scene in Michael Powell’s The Thief of Bagdad (1940) in which the giant Djinn, played by Rex Ingram, emerges from a bottle and hovers over the terrified thief, Abu (Sabu).

There haven’t been all that many Djinns in movies lately, but in George Miller’s inventive, very original Three Thousand Years of Longing there’s a memorable one, played by Idris Elba, fresh from his brush with Beast (see Stephen Romei’s review opposite).

Miller is a born storyteller, as well as being — as the Mad Max series of films can testify — one of cinema’s most audacious directors of action.

Those action movies are the reason he’s so famous around the world, and deservedly so, but I have a fondness for the other kinds of stories he tells, stories involving a talking pig: Babe, 1995, produced by Miller, directed by Chris Noonan; and its sequel Babe: Pig in the City, 1998, directed by Miller; the dancing penguins of Happy Feet; the inspirational true story of Lorenzo’s Oil (1992); and the dark fantasy of The Witches of Eastwick (1987).

To celebrate the centenary of cinema, Miller also made a documentary about Australian films and filmmakers, which was tellingly titled 40,000 Years of Dreaming (1996).

Based on a short story, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, by British writer AS Byatt, and scripted by Miller in collaboration with his daughter, Augusta Gore, Three Thousand Years of Longing opens in Istanbul where narratologist (ie. one who studies stories) Dr Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton in top form) is attending a conference. She visits the famous bazaar where she purchases a glass bottle. Back in her hotel room (the Agatha Christie room she’s informed!) she opens the bottle — and out pops the giant Djinn.

He is empowered to grant her three wishes, but she’s wary, having read all the Arabian Nights tales and knowing this sort of thing invariably ends badly. But the Djinn insists he must fulfil her wishes, and while she’s considering the matter he tells her three stories from his own life, the first dating back to the time of Solomon (a sequence acted by Nicolas Mouawad) and Sheba (Aamito Lagum).

After spending 1500 years in a bottle, the Djinn re-emerges in Constantinople in the early days of the Ottoman Empire where a slave, Gulten (Ece Yuksel), is in love with a Prince (Matteo Bocelli). The third story involves the hapless Zefir (Burcu Golgedar), the third wife of an elderly but randy merchant.

These stories are vividly illustrated, with top-notch production design by Roger Ford and peerless cinematography by John Seale. The film is packed with unexpected diversions. The final scenes, set in London, are every bit as effective as the elaborately detailed foreign settings from the distant past that occupy most of the film. A wicked sense of humour also pervades the movie: when Alithea questions the Djinn over the accuracy of his Solomon and Sheba story he tells her firmly: “I know. I was there.”

It’s great to see one of our top directors tackling something very different, and succeeding so spectacularly.

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Both Sides of the Blade (Avec amour et acharnement)
In cinemas
★★★★

French director Claire Denis has made 17 feature films in a career stretching back to 1988. Some, like Beau Travail (1999) and Let the Sunshine In (2017), have been highly regarded; others are much less interesting.

Both Sides of the Blade, which won her best director at the Berlin Film Festival earlier this year, is one of her best.

Based on a novel by Christine Angot, who wrote the screenplay in collaboration with Denis, this is a powerful relationship movie (the original French title means With Love and Determination).

Sara (Juliette Binoche) and Jean (Vincent Lindon) live in Paris in a top-floor apartment overlooking the rooftops.

They are clearly in love. But Jean has a past; a former football player who has been in prison for an undisclosed crime. His 15-year-old son, Marcus (Issa Perica) lives in the outer suburb of Vitry with Jean’s mother, Nelly (Bulle Ogier), who can’t control the boy.

Sara, who is a radio broadcaster, gets a jolt when she sees an ex-lover, Francois (Gregoire Colin), on the street. Francois subsequently makes it clear he wants to resume his affair with Sara, who becomes emotionally conflicted as she’s forced to decide between these two attractive men.

The leading actors are superb, and though the basic narrative — a woman torn between two lovers — is hardly new, Denis brings fresh insights and impact to the familiar material.

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Franklin (MA15+)
In cinemas (limited)
★★★★

Oliver Cassidy, who narrates much of this excellent documentary, is the son of Michael Cassidy, who was one of the key members of the Wilderness Society group, led by Bob Brown, who campaigned to stop the damming of Tasmania’s Franklin River in the early 1980s.

The film is divided into two basic parts. In one, Oliver follows in the footsteps of his father (who has meanwhile died of cancer), kayaking down the Franklin and referring to his father’s diary (Michael’s voice is spoken by Hugo Weaving). In the film’s other section director Kasimir Burgess, using archive materials and contemporary interviews, records the battle to save the Franklin from being dammed by the Tasmanian government of premier Robin Gray on behalf of the state’s Hydro Electric Company.

There have been several other films about this momentous campaign — which resulted in the establishment of the Greens party — but none that I’ve seen has been as detailed and informative as this.

The passion of the protesters is impressive as are the spectacular images of the magnificent river itself. British TV botanist David Bellamy was among the 1271 protesters arrested. There’s a reminder of a dark postscript to the campaign when some frustrated construction workers attempted to burn down a revered 2,000-year-old tree that fortunately survived the vandalism.

The harsh MA15+ rating given to the film by the Classification Board appears to have been awarded for occasional coarse language, but seems excessive given the film’s general appeal.

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Blaze (MA15+)
In cinemas
★★★

Near the start of Blaze, the first feature film directed by Archibald Prize-winning artist Del Kathryn Barton, the title character, a 12-year-old girl superbly played by young Julia Savage, is the horrified witness to a brutal crime.

While walking home from school, listening to music via earphones, Blaze enters a narrow suburban alleyway where she sees a couple engaged in a bitter quarrel which culminates in the rape and murder of the woman (Yael Stone) by the man (Josh Lawson). There’s a fine tradition in cinema of thrillers in which a child is witness to a murder but can’t convince any adults as to the truth of what they saw; Barton is not, however, telling that story, or anything much like it. She is more interested in the fantasy world into which Blaze retreats, a world dominated by a huge, bug-eyed dragon with its sparkling multi-coloured feathers and enormous eyelashes.

As a witness, Blaze has to appear in court and face the killer. Her sympathetic Dad (Simon Baker) does his best to support and comfort his troubled daughter.

Frankly, I could have done without the fantasy and would have preferred to concentrate more on the character of Blaze, a girl on the cusp of womanhood who is exposed to a terrifying case of violence against women.

But fantasy seems to be Barton’s stock-in-trade.

Blaze is worth seeing, partly as it’s the first foray into the world of feature films by an original artist, but perhaps more importantly for the performance of its young actor.