Three Thousand Years of Longing

George Miller adapted this from A. S. Byatt’s 1994 short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, and tied that title to an object on screen: the antique bottle Alithea buys in Istanbul is çeşm-i bülbül, nightingale’s eye glass. She is no generic academic either, but a scholar of narratology who sometimes hallucinates demonic beings. The Djinn sets out his rules at the start. No wishing for further wishes, none for immortality, none for an end to sin or suffering, and each wish must truly be her heart’s desire. Two of the three tales he tells sit inside the Ottoman palace: Gülten, a concubine of Suleiman, gives way to the reigns of Murad IV and Ibrahim. Erdil Yaşaroğlu appears as Professor Günhan. Filming was planned for March 2020 across Australia, Turkey and the United Kingdom; the pandemic pushed it back, and it began in Australia in November 2020. Against a $60 million budget the film took $20.3 million worldwide. A good fit if you want the terms of the three wishes put on the table early and the body of the film given to palace tales. Not for viewers after the pace of Miller’s Mad Max films; John Seale and Margaret Sixel, Fury Road’s cinematographer and editor, are here too, but their job is building three stories, not a chase.