3 Thousand Years of Longing? More like 3 Thousand Years of BORING lulz

hi folks. I went a lil crazy here and forgot what i was talking about. skip to the end for the review. i’d delete the other crap, but i’m very attached to my writing so i won’t. k thnx.

The Genius of Mad Max: Fury Road and Happy Feet

I fucking LOVE Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s a parable of visual storytelling and heart pounding action. The film was literally edge-of-your-seat intensity. I remember my heart pounding in my chest when I saw the film in theaters. I remember knowing that I was experiencing something that was going to inspire and resound with me for the rest of my life as I watched the film unravel. Then, I went home, looked up George Miller and laughed my ass off when I read that he had also directed a little film called Happy Feet and Babe: Pig in the City in the past ten years. 

In an animated film like Happy Feet, the film has a unique freedom and responsibility to create as simple and straightforward a story as possible, while also creating characters that are likable, and can teach the juvenile audience a lesson. It’s why the Toy Story franchise (and all Disney animated films) is so beloved. Production of the films is always focused on a few simple, time-tested principles. It just so happens that that’s exactly what’s needed to craft any successful film, in any genre, for any audience. It just so happens that in something like an action film, there’s a few more cooks in the kitchen, a few more ‘priorities’ and a lot more to complicate the process. Things like suspension of disbelief, our innate understanding of physics, or logic must be taken into account. That’s why we can have movies about anthropomorphic penguins in an animated medium, but have a really hard time wrapping our minds around The Hobbit’s orc antagonist or Batman v Superman’s Doomsday.

Nonetheless, as a director of a film like that, you’re given these guiding principles that always work. When Miller made Fury Road, he adapted these principles to a new genre, audience and medium- the way you’re supposed to. Then, he realized that asking the audience to deeply connect to the characters in a (mostly) alien world would be a tall ask. Sort of like asking us to give a shit about Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern. So he stripped it down. The characters, and markedly the main character of Max, are toned simple, one track ideals- which, again, isn’t a bad thing. Giving your characters a clear and focused goal is a very basic storytelling and character crafting principle. 

Then, he realized that asking the audience to deeply connect to the characters in a (mostly) alien world would be a tall ask. Sort of like asking us to give a shit about Ryan Reynolds’ Green Lantern. So he stripped it down

-On comparing Mad Max and The Green Lantern

You don’t need to add more, but you need this bit. When you fail to give your characters a guiding principle, a goal or a target, the film and story have no reason to progress, in any medium. Furiosa wants to free the women and bring them to the Green Place. The antagonist, Immortan Joe, wants to enslave the women and bring them back to his fortress. That’s it. Everything else in the film revolves around this central conflict. And that’s powerful. 

The ambition of Three Thousand Years

Narrative structure is often simplified to a three act structure: Beginning, Middle, End. In a film, the sizes of these acts are often cut and dry: The Middle is the longest act, the End is the shortest act. The inciting incident, the catalyst for the central plot, bridges the Beginning and the Middle of the film, and the conflict, the resolution of the plot, (generally) bridges the Middle and the End. There are derivations of this structure, and it’s absolutely worth experimenting, exploring, and even defying this structure once you have a deep, proven understanding of this structure. Animated children’s films, which are filmmaking at their most basic, are always always 3 acts. Fury Road is, loosely, also a 3 act film. 

The Beginning acquaints us with Max, the world, Immortan and Furiosa. When Furiosa veers off mission and encounters the Spikey Cars is the Inciting Incident. From then until when Max convinces her and the old women to charge straight through Immortan’s forces, is the middle. The final fight, all the way until the close of the film, is the final act and the climax. This derivation is subtle. In Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, for example, after the climactic Battle of Helm’s Deep, we get a final moment of Frodo and Sam heading to Mordor, and Golem revealing his intent to betray Frodo. This is maybe 5 minutes, but it constitutes a Final Act. In Return of the King, the Final Act stretches for about 30 minutes after the destruction of the Ring. 

It is satisfying to have a longer, meaningful final act, as it allows us to say goodbye to our characters and also understand the ramifications of the climax, and the choices made during the climax. Having the climax and the final act roll into one is very difficult, and when done incorrectly, feels… cheap. The film feels incomplete because the filmmakers couldn’t be fucked to give us those moments to sit with the consequences of the events of the story. I recently watched a horrible, terrible, poorly edited action film called Seek and Destroy. The protagonist decouples a train and saves people, then he sits in a bar with his friend and they look deeply in one another’s eyes, invoking homoerotic vibes, then the movie ends. It was a five minute final act that did not explore the fact that everyone thought the protagonist had died, or that they’d recovered a nuclear weapon, or that the two hunky dudes in a bar staring deeply into one another’s eyes was really fucking gay. It felt cheap. It felt incomplete. Fury Road does not, because the film resolved its themes, character arcs and plot lines during the climax in meaningful, satisfactory ways. The film didn’t need us to sit with the consequences, because they were already resolved. The story was complete. It was time for the movie to end.

A review for Three Thousand Years of Longing

I just realized that I wrote about a thousand words about Mad Max and narrative structure before realizing that I barely talked about the fucking movie this post is about. Further, I burnt myself out for a full week and a half. So here I am, eleven days removed from the movie, finishing this ‘ReViEw’.

The point I was trying to make in my rambling above was that 3k Longing struggles to figure out its footing and its act structure. Like Mad Max, it follows an amended 3 act structure, but this time around it doesn’t really work. Two thirds into the film, all we’ve done is hear stories about the women the Djinn had fallen in love with. The protagonist, Alithea, played by Tilda Swinton then makes a wish, after complaining and lamenting about how the Djinn will likely trick her, or leave her in a worse state after making a wish. She wishes for her and the Djinn to fall in love with one another. The film then shifts into another act, where Alithea takes the Djinn home and we have a loosely connected series of anthological events in Alithea’s life. The Djinn tells her he’s dying (or something), and she wishes that he’d talk to her. The final wish she makes is nearly immediately after, where she wishes the Djinn to return to wherever he’s from. 

The acts are very skewed, and it’s very difficult to find any sort of balance in what events are worth more weight or attention. Further, both the Djinn and Alithea’s characters display no true desires, and their motivations exist only to allow the story to move, not to serve their own selves. Alithea’s big wish to fall in love doesn’t follow any of her actions, and the Djinn is nothing more than an orator for some… fairly wishy-washy stories. I was hoping to find some connection or theme between the stories on my own, but even at this point I struggle to figure out any lessons that the characters or the audience may have learned.

I wanted to talk about how Miller’s previous works were very good examples, if not the examples of visual storytelling and worldbuilding, and how this film tries something new, by attempting an exposition-heavy storytelling. After all, the origin of all stories and communication is oral. Unfortunately, the script lacks much oomf, and things read very surface level. Further, the visual elements are disconnected and lack explanation. There’s two moments where mystical beings accost Alithea before she finds the Djinn’s lamp, with no explanation as to why. They are never mentioned again. There are some parallels in the construction and choreography of the characters’ movements, but it’s, again, not very complex.

All in all, I was left with a grimace when the credits rolled. I can tell you this, though.

George Miller likes him some FAT fuckin titties. This is TWO movies in a row where he’s very prominently featured fat women with fat titties. Mad Max has a short scene showing that Immortan has a stable of overweight women nursing dead babies, producing mother’s milk. This is a fairly notable element in the story and was INITIALLY dismissed as more Mad Max worldbuilding weirdness. 3k Longing has a lot of fat women with fat titties hanging around, and a very uncomfortable fat women orgy scene. George Miller is FREAKIN. Miller is fat titties as Tarantino is to toes. 

George Miller likes him some FAT fuckin titties.

Just gotta read the review to figure out the context here.

Also, George Miller hates pregnant women. Bellies are for jiggling, not babies. Thus, this is Miller’s second film killing a very pregnant woman. In Mad Max, Splendid, played by Rosie Huntington-Whitley, is run over by Immortan’s own car, killing her and the baby. In 3k Longing, one of the girls in the Djinn’s story perishes while carrying a child. The fuck is up with that, Miller? That’s not FREAKIN, that’s just freaky yo shawty needs therapy.

Here’s my final note, a theory, more like. Alithea is a woman driven to paranoia and hallucinations. She’s a lonely woman, living in a world of stories and myths. She sees little goblins in airports and ghosts in audiences that no one else sees. She’s accosted by a Djinn who grants her wishes that don’t affect her external life, like wealth, beauty or a house. Her neighbors don’t see the Djinn at first, and then act weird when she does introduce him. The scene cuts before we get any more dialogue between Alithea and her neighbors. At the end of the movie, we see that she’s written a story, and the little title cards we see are hand drawn by her in the book. The whole film, all the weirdness, is all in her own head. The Djinn acts as a barrier for her mind against the loneliness of a new country, the harassment from her neighbors, the yearning for a partner, the validation of her life’s work. The Djinn doesn’t exist, and is merely a figment of her imagination. 

In conclusion

3/10.
There are a lot of tiddies in this movie yo (.)(.)

Wondering how my rating system works? Let me explain!