Discussing the role of storytelling through George Miller’s Three Thousand Years of Longing
This essay discusses the 2022 fantasy romantic drama Three Thousand Years of Longing directed and produced by George Miller, starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton.
It is imperative that I provide a preamble of sorts about storytelling and its potency to affect the world before I begin discussing Three Thousand Years of Longing.
“The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think, but to give you questions to think upon.” ― Brandon Sanderson, The Way of Kings
The best stories, I believe, are like onions. To enjoy it, you have to peel it to get beneath its surface. And by doing so, it won’t leave you unaffected. With each layer you peel, you get watery eyes. You peel and you peel, each covering lending a hand to enhance flavor.
Some onions are more pungent than others. There are sweet, red, yellow, shallots, and green. Like stories, onions are one of the largest plant genera with hundreds of different species. Genre upon genre, our world is filled with stories, some disguised as truths, some swallowed as lies. There are bound to be preferences or exceptions, like honor among thieves.
It’s not just the kernel of a story that matters. It’s how a story is told. It’s how you weave the story that wins the heart. There are stories that burrow in my mind for days, weeks and months. There are stories that have spooked me for years.
Since the dawn of time, storytelling has been man’s most powerful weapon. We often forget that it is stories that have kept us alive. Stories are the alchemy of life, the yolk of our existence. Science is what enables us to make sense of it all through logic. But stories, that’s a different practical magic. Tempestuous, bizarre, magnificent, and tragic. Stories are what keep us flourishing, loving, and hopeful.
Storytelling has been used by the viziers of every kingdom known to man to navigate kings, sultans, and their enemies. Stories were used to improve empathy, justice, order, cooperation, and other critical elements when we say the word civilization.
But the secret to a powerful story, what has egged mankind for all these time, is longing.
Longing is the delicate string that binds our today with tomorrow. Longing is the elixir of youth, the serum that frightens many of premature death, death before fulfillment. Longing is what keeps ghosts and spirits roaming through the halls of dilapidated mansions. Longing is the canon that expanded kingdoms across vast continents and deep oceans, built legendary empires through barren deserts and white mountains. Longing is what weakened even the mightiest of kings and brought giants to their knees.
Although released as a movie, Three Thousand Years of Longing is based on a 1994 short story ‘The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye’ by A.S. Byatt.
The story opens with a lonely but independent woman named Alithea Binnie. A narratologist by profession, Alithea is a specialist in world literature, which takes her all over the globe, examining stories and conducting lectures on intertextual analysis. Her work combs through metaphors, cultural symbolisms and languages.
But almost from the beginning of the story we see Alithea harboring a secret. She possesses an ability to see mythical creatures and literary characters, some almost demonic. There seems to be an enmesh between her real world and her fantasies. As viewers, we can only guess if it’s a bane, a blessing, or a red flag for a medical condition such as a brain tumor that is presenting her “hallucinations.”
At a conference in Turkey, Alithea visits the Grand Bazaar and picks up a antique glass bottle.
“How can we tell if it’s genuine?” Alithea asks her seller.
“You can see specks of blood from the glass blower’s lungs in its design.”
One might shudder at the thought of such a revelation. Alithea’s colleague advises her to select a different ornament, one that’s less “flawed” and more pleasant by historical account. But Alithea refuses. All the more, she is drawn to the aberrant nature of the glass bottle.
Back in her room, Alithea attempts to scrub clean her new find, and out comes a Djinn. He tells her that he is to grant her three wishes but she ought to choose wisely. There are conditions to the rules: he cannot grant more wishes or for absolutes, such as to erase all the ills of the world. He can only grant her wishes pertaining to her personal desires.
Alithea is all too familiar with narratives of genies and Djinns. They’re known to be tricksters, out to fool men. “Only bad luck comes out of all the wishes,” she tells the Djinn. “Moreover, with a life fulfilled, there is nothing I’d wish for.”
Alithea: There’s no story about wishing that is not a cautionary tale. None end happily. Not even the ones that are supposed to be jokes.
The Djinn is angered by Alithea’s incurious and insouciant demeanor with his gifted presence.
“It is impossible. Everyone has a desire.” Djinn declares. “But you and I are the authors of this story, and we can avoid all traps.”
“I am fulfilled,” replies Alithea defiantly.
Alithea was more interested to know how the Djinn got trapped inside the bottle. As a lover of stories, she’s curious about the Djinn’s life granting others their wishes.
And so begins a series of stories that encompasses three thousand years of love, loss and servitude.
“All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.” ― Leo Tolstoy
The Djinn begins his recount by professing his love for the Queen of Sheba. They were inseparable lovers until King Solomon came to court her attention. At first Sheba was disinterested. A half Djinn herself, the queen presented a challenge for Solomon to test his wisdom. This includes answering the question known as difficult to man: “What women most desire.”
Here, the story takes a twist. It has been told to us for centuries that Solomon called Sheba to come to him in “humble submission.” According to Djinn, who was there to witness as Sheba’s lover, it was Solomon.
Solomon was obsessed with conquering the queen in her own bed. He also was deceptive. He sought the help of spirits from other realms for the answer. Upon whispering the secret into her ears, Solomon won over the queen. The Djinn was caught spying on them, thus, Solomon used magic to entrap the Djinn and cursed him to be a genie in a bottle.
For 2,500 years the genie languished in solitude, submitted to pangs of anger and hopelessness. The conversation between Djinn and Alithea marks a cornerstone to our understanding of both characters.
Djinn: And there I am, left to my own oblivion, with no one to hear my voice, no one to know me, nor feel me, nor sense me. You can’t imagine.
Alithea: Well, actually, I can.
Djinn: Can you imagine the loneliness? How it might overwhelm?
Alithea: I can.
Alithea: We exist only if we are real to others. Do you agree?
Alithea: I do.
Djinn: This, then, is our fate, Alithea. If you make no wish at all, I will be caught between worlds, invisible and alone, for all time.
“Stories have to be told or they die, and when they die, we can’t remember who we are or why we’re here.” ― Sue Monk Kidd, The Secret Life of Bees
The subsequent stories shared by the Djinn further demonstrates the power of storytelling. Eventually, Djinn succeeds in winning Alithea over to make her wish for a desire. His weaving of stories invokes Alithea’s deep seated longings — those she knew existed, and those she never knew she wanted.
Djinn was right about one thing when it comes to human nature: we are never without a secret desire waiting to be fulfilled. It’s difficult to accuse Djinn of manipulating Alithea’s vulnerability. All the while, it appeared as if she was the one in full control of their discourse.
That brings us to what makes Three Thousand Years of Longing a modern masterpiece: how one can collapse the story and interpret it in a hundred ways.
I offer one perspective.
Throughout the movie, inserted in subtle clues in various scenes, discerning viewers can construct a hypothesis that the tales have little to do with Djinn and his folly. Through the frames of different characters and assorted lovers, through episodes of deception, betrayal, greed and death, we are looking at the life story of Alithea herself.
“It’s like everyone tells a story about themselves inside their own head. Always. All the time. That story makes you what you are. We build ourselves out of that story.” ― Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind
There is an existential question for all of us here: What is our story that we have been holding back from the world?
This is rather telling from their conversation. As we’re taken into the second chapter of the story, we begin to see how Djinn and Alithea’s worlds begin to converge.
Alithea: This is the story you’ve been avoiding telling me all along.
Djinn: This is the story I’ve avoided telling even myself.
As tempted as I am to expound Three Thousand Years of Solitude deeper, I must resist. I feel it would be a disservice to anyone inclined to watch the movie. It’s best to allow yourself to deduce the story and formulate your own interpretation. That, I believe, is the beauty of its story arc.
But I will leave you with this: What I found profound about the connection between Alithea and Djinn is the evocative vignettes centered on love as a theme. They mirror our flaws.
Each portrayal of love is flawed by design. Some viewers may feel dissatisfied with this, or even see it as a provocation. Yet I find this approach realistic, mature, and though-provoking.
Once again, with its strength tied to the power of storytelling, each vignette is a cautionary tale of what love means to different people, influenced by time, culture, and the old time villain, selfish greed.
We often think that war is the downfall of humanity. Through each tale, it is in fact love that has been the cause of our ruin. Our desire for what cannot be; our longing for what has been lost; our insatiable thirst for a love that does not belong to us; our incapacity to temper the power of love when it is in our hands. I find this relates to the earlier conversation at the Grand Bazaar about specks of blood from a glass blower’s lungs trapped in an intricate glass bottle. Nothing that’s authentic comes devoid of human suffering.
Suffering, languishing, and longing are cardinal components of our human existence. Perhaps that is why we are in constant search of a reason to believe in what’s elusive. We are a cup filled to the brim yet never full.
For us, human love needs to be owned, to be caged, to be imprisoned, like a genie in a bottle. Love is forced to be the panacea to all our ills and yearnings. We idealize love to end wars and bloodshed. Yet we find reasons to create them through hate and jealousy.
It is love that entrapped the Djinn in the bottle in the first place. It is love for stories that isolated Alithea from the rest of her world.
Like Djinn’s second lover, Zefir, who wished for knowledge through ferocious reading, we are obsessed with the pursuit of solving everything. Yet we are incapable of handling the enormity of consciousness and its consequences when given all access.
We seek fulfillment only to keep rewriting the journal of our desires. We know what we want based on seeing what others have. We live by comparison. Nothing will ever be enough, because at the heart of longings, we know not of what we truly seek in life. That in itself, is our human tragedy.
Alithea: Do you know the answer to her question?
Djinn: What women most desire?
Alithea: Yeah.
Djinn: Do you not know? If you don’t know, I cannot tell you.
Alithea: Well, surely we don’t all want the same thing.
Djinn: Madam, your yearnings are not at all clear to me.
It is upon Alithea’s self-actualization that she willingly releases her love for Djinn so he can be what Djinn needs to be in his own realm: free to grant others their wishes. By doing so, both are finally set free — until they find themselves in a new perpetual, self-constructed prison.
Unless we find the right words to write our story designed for triumph, we shall persist as a tragic hero awaiting an action that will reveal our hamartia.
As for Alithea Binnie, with all that’s been said and done, did her encounter with Djinn really take place? Or did her loneliness and amalgamation of narratology concoct the whole experience? Was she led by her deep-seated longings to an impossible love affair? Or did she finally fulfill her secret desire?
I leave that onion for you to peel. Meanwhile, be careful what you wish for.