by James Mottram
Swapping the Namibian desert for a hotel room in Istanbul (well, technically a studio space in Sydney), the Australian veteran director’s latest film, Three Thousand Years of Longing, is an achingly romantic adult fairytale starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba.
Adapted from. A.S. Byatt’s short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye, it sees Swinton play Dr. Alithea Binnie, a lonely divorcee who works as an academic in the field of narratology.
During a stay in Turkey for a conference, she browses a bazaar, where she finds a small trinket. On cleaning it in her hotel bathroom, out pops a Djinn (Elba), offering her three wishes in exchange for his freedom. But rather than speak her heart’s desire, she listens to his epic tale of incarceration.
Boasting stunning visuals – as you might expect from the innovator who brought us Babe and Happy Feet – it’s a film that sweeps viewers up into an epic tale of love and loss.
FilmInk sat down with Miller in Cannes to talk about what brought him to this story, why it took so long, and his feelings towards the recent Australian election.
What attracted you to adapting A.S. Byatt’s short?
“I remember when I first read the story and it really stuck with me. A.S. Byatt had put together an anthology of fairy stories. And the publisher said, ‘We need another story.’ So, she wrote The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye. She wrote that story, she wrote it in a hurry, but it was the longest story – a novella. And I went to see her, and we asked to buy the rights to it. And she said, ‘Look, why that story? Because I think the other ones are crafted much more carefully.’ And I said, ‘Well, there’s something about this story that rang true, it felt authentic.’ And she said, ‘Ah, that’s because everything in the story is true except the Djinn.’ She was the narratologist who went to Istanbul!”
What else drew you in?
“It has so much about everything that we think about, in life at least. I’m sure we all do. Love, mortality, what’s real, what’s not… not only about how we tell stories or the effect of stories, but why they’re intrinsic to us as human beings. And how stories across time affect us as individuals. The positive and negative of stories. It was encapsulated in one relatively short story, a whole lot of these issues.”
You’ve been working on this, on and off, for two decades. What took you so long?
“Well, the first thing you need is a screenplay that is persuasive; for people to be interested in doing it. We worked on the screenplay on and off for many years. And then the next significant thing that happened was that here [in Cannes], five years ago, I met Tilda Swinton for the first time, not knowing – apart from the work – who Tilda was. Unforgettable! And I kept thinking ‘Oh my God, she could play Alithea.’ We worked on the screenplay for about a year. We went back to it again. And Tilda read it. I mean, it was a big, big moment for me, when she called almost immediately and said, ‘Yes, I’d like to do the movie.’ Meantime, about the same time five years ago, I’d met Idris at the BAFTAs. It’s one of the benefits of having films out there – you get to go meet people. [That] was very significant, because you have a stronger sense of who they are as individuals. And ultimately, how they can mesh that into the character. So, I knew that there was no one else. From this moment, there’s no one else who from the past in cinema, or present today, that I could conceive of possibly playing the character of Alithea. And the same with Idris and the Djinn. I can’t think of anybody else. I honestly can’t. And once you’ve had that, then the sell was a lot easier.”
Did you ever think of this as a studio movie?
“I knew it wasn’t a studio film. We had a relationship with Warner Brothers, it was a fractious relationship. There were still people who I really, really admired at Warner Brothers. And I met with them and said, ‘Look, we’re gonna make this next film before we do Furiosa.’ But it’s not a studio film. And we went to Mike De Luca, who had just taken over MGM – I think it was the second project he bought into. I was able to go with Tilda and Idris and the story and they said, ‘Yes, we’re in.’ And that was America. And then we went to FilmNation and did the same thing with the rest [of the world].”
You’ve called this film the “anti-Mad Max”. Why?
“Well, when I said ‘anti-Mad Max’…I meant it almost logistically. That [Fury Road] was a film that happened over three days in a vast landscape, outdoors, with very few words. This was the complete opposite: this happened over three thousand years, in a confined space, with a lot words. That was one thing. So, stylistically that was refreshing… having come out of one movie and with the intention of making another Mad Max movie, which we’re literally in the middle of now. So that’s what I meant by that.”
The film also deals with fear of the other. Was that a conscious theme?
“That’s definitely in there. I mean, you come to the modern world, and we see divisions. I think it’s very clear, that’s to do with the fact that we’ve got instruments [smartphones] where we can connect with like-minded people all over the world and get enough of a critical mass of a community to have all sorts of dysfunctional beliefs. And we stick to them, and we reinforce them, and so on. And I think that’s what we see – we see it in all countries, except, by the way, in Australia. We changed to a much heathier government. Just much more in every way. And so that can be a good thing. We were going to be a mini-me America – the Dis-United States of America. We were almost the Dis-United States of Australia for a while, but that’s changed. At least there’s an optimism.”
You use visual effects superbly here. How do you look at the development of VFX now?
“I feel very, very fortunate to have been around long enough to make films which saw the transition – late ’80s, early ’90s into the digital dispensation. That was a big moment, I think, in cinema. Probably the most significant after the advent of sound. It was always something that intrigued me, so I got in there fairly early when we made the Babe films. It sounds pretty simple now, but pigs talking… It was made at the time at Universal, Steven Spielberg, along with George Lucas, pioneered this stuff with Jurassic Park. So that was the beginning of it. That was a big, significant moment. I mean there was some earlier work too. Young Sherlock Holmes, I think, was the first one that ILM did. And obviously, it’s advanced now. And the difference between now and ten years ago on CG is remarkable. But that’s a tool. That’s not the essence of the story.”
As you mentioned, you’re now shooting Mad Max prequel Furiosa. Are you excited to dive back into that world?
“Yes. It’s the prequel to the story of Furiosa that we met, that Charlize played, in Fury Road. That story, because that happened over a short period of time, we had to pick it up on the run, as it were, almost speed date. To get to understand her backstory. This story is the fifteen years that took her – and the world – to get to that point.”
Three Thousand Years of Longing is in cinemas on September 1, 2022
