UPDATE: "Three Thousand Years of Longing" (2022) now on Amazon Prime
Last edited Fri May 26, 2023, 10:17 AM - Edit history (2)
British "narratologist" Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) arrives in Istanbul to give a lecture and while there she picks up an old, damaged glass bottle in the bazaar, a bottle containing a Djinn (Idris Elba), who must grant her three wishes to secure his freedom. Well-versed in the storytelling traditions of wish-granting, and its pitfalls, Alithea is reluctant to use her wishes, expecting a bad result, so the Djinn attempts to convince her with the tales of his three-thousand-year struggle for release from captivity.
I devoured the tales of the Arabian Nights as a child and fondly remember the thrill of reading those stories, and this movie brought back that same feeling. It is beautifully filmed with inventive visual effects and a plot that teases along from one fantastic story to the next. It is one of those rare movies for which I would check the elapsed time in the hope there was still plenty of it left to enjoy. Swinton is perfect as the work-obsessed Alithea and Elba makes his Djinn both a mysterious and engaging, even trustworthy, figure. This is a story about getting lost in stories and a story to get lost in as well.
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that would be one wish already granted 
