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There are some stories that are perfectly suited to film.

There are others that work better on the page.

I think Three Thousand Years of Longing is the latter.

I’ve not read the source material for this. In fact I didn’t even know it was based on a book until the finish. While I was watching it though I had this feeling that despite a fantastical and engaging plot, it wasn’t quite working for me. Then in the credits at the end it said ‘adapted from the short story The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye by A. S. Byatt and knowing some of Byatt’s writing I could instantly see that this tale would be lovely with her style of prose. The ability she has to combine the contemporary and the traditional and the way she uses literary touchstones would be perfect for this. At that point I also I knew what was wrong with the film; while genie at the centre of it may magically fit in a bottle but he doesn’t fit in this medium.

This is director George Miller’s first movie since Mad Max: Fury Road but anyone expecting something similar to that has forgotten that as well as Mad Max this guy also gave us Happy Feet, The Witches of Eastwick and Babe. Dude does not follow a pattern. Sure enough this is very different to Rockatansky and Furiosa’s epic adventure. This film sees Tilda Swinton’s savvy academic accidentally release an Idris Elba shaped wish spirit into her hotel room. He proceeds then to tell her fantastical tales of his past so that she will trust him; tales of Sheeba, Solomon, Suleiman and Mustafa. Like Miller’s previous films this has great visuals but on this occasion I can’t help but think the story would have been better without any visual representation of any kind. I’m sure Byatt’s words prompt unlimited imagined images to the reader but here, like Idris fantastical character, it all spends too much time trapped behind glass. (I know cinema screens are not made of glass but work with me on the metaphor.)

Rather than Mad Max, or Babe or Happy Feet, this feels most reminiscent of 2005’s Tale of Tales but whereas there the fairytales told are detailed and expansive, here they are largely bereft of personality and only there to support a larger narrative that in turn finds no room to breathe for itself. With its duel settings of modern Europe and Ottoman Turkey the movie has the promise of the East and the West but none of it is realised. The historical stories are quite superficial and the contemporary section seems to be setting up a battle of wits between Swinton’s scholar and the mythical trickster demon but this does not find a resolution. While I can see there would be poetry in this in print, it seems underwritten in this context.

Three Thousand Years of Longing has good performances from its leads, although after two hours of staring at Idris Elba’s funny ears you’ll long to see him in a grubby overcoat again. In the end, what it lacks is an authentic sense of the magic it needed. Magic that in this case cinema has failed to conjure.

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The Ripley Factor

Most of the women in this film feature in the stories so are all slave girls, concubines or queens fighting to keep their flimsy grip on power. Almost all of them are dressed down in some way which, to be fair, is something this film shares with Miller’s last movie. Fury Road had a strong feminist theme that was let down by this but this has no such element to undermine. Both films also seem to have the same interest in large naked women for some reason. The nature and even the attire of these women is not a problem by itself but none of them really have any character. They are little more than sketches on a page in want of a page. Some find agency but of they all become cautionary tales at the end.

Swinton’s Alithea is a strong, intelligent woman at the start but while the story doesn’t necessarily ruin this, it does steer away from it which is a big shame.