Mankind survives by faith. They often rely on certain beliefs and create numerous stories out of them. Some of them are true, like the Earth being round, and some of them are myths or miracles. Humanity changes over time, but faith remains. Although they are refurbished and cultivated, their core remains untouched. Faith is indocile. Faith is irreplaceable. We humans have been harboring faith in our hearts since the beginning of the world. The faith has many names and many kinds. Some of them end up being worshiped as idols, and some others are abandoned. Human beings divide their faith into numerous identities, where in respective places or countries, they gain shapes of Gods, demons, and Djinns. Whereas a faction of humans believes that there is no God or no other incorporeal influences other than living creatures. On the contrary, another group of believers supposes the extreme force of nature might remain unformed. In George Miller’s “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” we find a story of faith where Alithea experiences some amorphous existence that dwells beyond others’ limiting beliefs.
Inspired by A.S.Byte’s “Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eyes,” the film, through astounding visuals and a poignant story, separates Alithea from the convoluted, micro-brained human thought process. As the story begins to take shape, Alithea first presents us with a difficult choice; whether we believe her story or not, it is true. Of course, this is how all storytellers are supposed to begin their stories so that along their journey, we set ourselves in search of that incredible truth. Alithea’s tale is no exception. Alithea’s narrative introduces her, saying that she is a narratologist whose mission is to find the ultimate truth in all the unknown stories of mankind, but when her plane lands in Turkey, she already has a glimpse of a dwarf-like, bizarre man at the airport. Although it dissolves in the air in no time. Alithea asks her professor friends to make sure if they had seen the same. But when a discussion is derived from that, the professor names her fragment of the brain, the “Djinn.” Even in her seminar lecture (a comic or story book discussion), which completely questions the myth of mankind and the existence of their God, Alithea senses a strange God or Djinn-like figure that she believes is attacking her. Finally, from Istanbul’s bazaar, when she brings an antique blue casket called Cesme bulbul to her hotel room, a giant Djinn emerges from it.
Alithea is a lonely and independent woman whose preconceived beliefs drive her to find her place in an imaginary world. Just as God exists in most people’s minds and does not in others, this imaginary substance is born of Alithea’s deep-seated beliefs. Since childhood, she has been a studious girl, and she has become a scholar today. A boy has lived with her since childhood who was purely her illusion, but this illusion Alithea does not want to dispel but believes in relishing. As she grows up, she falls in love. She finds a flesh-and-blood human with whom she got married and later divorced. Isolated since childhood, Alithea’s life has been solitary. Finally, when she meets the Djinn, who, though monstrous in appearance, resembles Alithea in character, This Djinn had also found love in his life, sometimes in the semi-fictional character Queen Sheba and sometimes, 200 years ago, in an oppressed young woman, Zefir. Those two things were fleeting in his life. Therefore, for 3000 years, he was immersed in loneliness and waited for release. When he is finally freed by Alithea, he begs her for three wishes. But Alithea, in her accomplished life, demands that Djinn himself be freed from this loneliness. Djinn and Alithea find each other in order to put an end to their solitude. Although Djinn was brought to the reality where Alithea resides, he begins to burn slowly in the noisy environment of the present world. Alithea obligingly frees him to prevent his existence from collapsing. As she had freed her ex-husband Jack, she achingly bids goodbye to her beloved, Djinn.
The story is so eloquent with its artistic and astonishing visuals that it makes the film eccentrically ravishing. While “Three Thousand Years of Longing” questions the mythical existence and their common truth in stories alongside, it also focuses on a brilliant brain’s illusionistic particles that the protagonist captures to lessen her desertedness. Using the platters of portrayal like a European painting and revealing a dark and gore imprint of the myths makes the experience gratifying, but sometimes the loneliness and the pain of it are somewhere defocused. Even bringing such enigmatic actors like Idris Alba and Tilda Swinton into a room (those who spare no effort in depicting their roles), Miller somehow rushes, in the end, to make the protagonists happy anyway, which leaves us with a certain sense of dissatisfaction. However, “Three Thousand Years of Longing” is almost a successful attempt for Miller to establish his thought by offering us his imaginary fulfillment and a half-baked closure to his protagonist’s abstract reliance.
