Thoughts on Three Thousand Years of Longing

 I wish someone had told me earlier that Three Thousand Years of Longing was George Miller doing Douglas Sirk! I would’ve seen it three hundred times already!

First of all, even before going into this movie I had a notion that I was going to really enjoy it. I can always get behind a director’s big swing after a smash success, and especially someone like Miller who has been around for as long as he has and really nailed down what he wants to do and what it looks like. That’s as good a transition as any to the movie’s visual styling I suppose. 

My vocabulary when it comes to this stuff is unfortunately lacking but I’m going to try my best. DP John Seale came out of his second retirement to shoot this movie which is oddly fitting for a movie like this. The visual language of this movie is the same unspoken language of elements. Air and fire move together independently and simultaneously just as the camera moves both as an objective observer, but also as Djinn. The camera has a certain wandering property to it. It seems to always be moving with a sense of purpose and energy to it that is paradoxically known and mysterious. 

This visual paradox also finds its way into the text and subtext of the film. 

When I was younger I was always trying to find sets of truths in the world around me, especially in the art I would surround myself with. I would devour the AFI top 100 list in high school and pour over screenplays like Chinatown and Back to the Future because I was told there was an objective truth and quality to these pieces of art. The unfortunate byproduct of all this is now that I’m older and out of this way of thinking I really struggle to watch these really great movies. I boiled them down to their barest scientific state and so much was lost in translation. So much of this movie is about Tilda Swinton’s character taking these thousands of story and stripping them down to a place where they can all be identified under a microscope. This isn’t even necessarily a bad thing but you miss the most important part of any story or piece of art. For example, have you ever heard a family tell the same story ten times but it still gets a chuckle out of you, or you urging a friend or family member to tell a story you’ve heard before to someone else. Everyone has experienced something like this before but it’s still hyper-specific to you. 

Ubiquity is so personal sometimes. 

George Miller is up there in age and it sure looks like he’s doing some reflecting. What is the purpose of telling all the stories he’s told? It’s worth noting he’s navigated the rather cruel film industry with a deft hand. Not falling into studio systems, his wife is his editor, and most important to me he wrote Three Thousand Years of Longing with his daughter. He has managed to tell the stories that interest him greatly in a way that avoids the over dissecting and sterilization of art.

Something to greatly admire about him.

I really implore everyone to see this. It's a movie that tells us just how important we are to each other’s lives in ways we can’t possibly notice. Thanks for reading.