THEn air this evening at 9.25pm on first TV on Rai 3, Three thousand years of waiting It’s a romantic fantasy directed by George Miller and starring Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba. The story tells the special, and decidedly surreal, meeting between a literary scholar and a Genie of the lamp that, very soon, it will turn into love.
Three thousand years of waitingthe plot of the film premiering on Rai 3
Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton) is a British literary scholaroccasionally suffering from hallucinations populated by demonic beings. During a business trip to Istanbul, he purchases an ancient bottle in a market which he discovers is inhabited by a Genie (Idris Elba), who offers to grant three of his wishes. Alithea objects, thinking she is once again the victim of her hallucinations. As the Genie, to prove to her that he truly “exists”, tells her how he ended up trapped in the bottle.
When the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), her cousin and lover, accepts King Solomon’s courtship, gets rid of the Genie by throwing the bottle into the sea. The bottle is found by Gülten (Ece Yuksel), an Ottoman concubine at the time of Sultan Suleiman. Gülten makes his first two wishes. The first, that the sultan’s son, Mustafa, falls in love with her. The second, to be able to get pregnant. But before the woman can make her third wish, Mustafa was accused of treason and killed by his father.
Some time later, the bottle is found by the slave Zefir (Burcu Golgedar), with whom the Genie develops a relationship and conceives a sonbut when he insists that she make the third wish, she chooses to forget she ever met him.
At this point, Alithea, moved by the story, wishes she and the Genie fall in love and so it happens.
Some time later, in London, the woman discovers that the city’s cellular and satellite networks are interfering with the Genie’s health and she finds herself faced with a complicated choice: keep the Genie or free him?
Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton in “Three Thousand Years of Waiting”. (Prime Video)
A romantic fantasy full of visual cues
Film adaptation of one of the stories in the collection The genius in the nightingale’s eye written by Antonia Susan Byatt in 1994, Three thousand years of waiting is directed by George Miller, the creator of the saga Mad Max but also Babe’s dadthe most famous pig in the history of cinema, and director of the cartoon Happy Feet. A bizarre filmography by the Australian director who, with Three thousand years of waitingis further embellished from a work as original as it is classic in its melodrama structure.
As in all of Miller’s films, it dominates the visionary component: here too, without fear of resulting in the grotesque, the director gives free rein to all his creativity. Three thousand years of waiting it is a journey through the centuries: an immersive story that moves with great ease from a solidly dramatic register to an exquisitely grotesque one.
However, it would be unfair to reduce it to pure entertainment for the eyes given that the film, despite its high dose of spectacularity, is a tender and passionate love story, capable of breaking down the laws of space and time. AND the protagonists, Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba, although “unlikely” as a couple, provide moments of absolute emotionespecially in the ending.
The cast includes the previously unseen couple Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba
English actor famous for the television series Luther, Idris Elba was born artistically as a DJ but soon moved on to acting. In the early 2000s he began acting for important directors like Ridley Scott and Kenneth Branagh calling him on the set of Thor. In recent years, Idris Elba returned to play Luther in the 2023 sequel film directed by Jamie Payne and recently finished filming Kathryn Bigelow’s latest, as yet untitled, film.
Tilda Swinton is currently in Italian cinemas with the film The next room by Pedro Almodóvar: the movie winner of the Golden Lion at the latest Venice Film Festival stars her together with Julianne Moore. The two actresses play two old friends who meet again after years of separation and together face the serious illness that has struck one of them.
In the cinematic future of the British actress there is a new starring film, The Ballad of a Small Playeralongside Colin Farrell. It is the story of a gambler who meets a woman in Macau who is decisive for his salvation.
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