Thousands of years of stories – wonderfully told

Hardly 3,000 years in the making, but it took The Other Half and I three attempts to finally get to see George Miller’s latest film, after an encounter with a bad egg and then, a wait for a plumber.

But third time lucky, we made it to the cinema today – and thank goodness we did.

 

Based on a 1994 short story by AS Byatt, The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Ey, this is about British scholar Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), an apparently happy loner who ‘suffers’ from an overactive imagination.

 

In Istanbul to address a conference on mythology and storytelling, she buys a small glass bottle from an old store. Back in her hotel room, it breaks and lets free a djinn – an invisible being with magical powers originating in early Islamic Arabian religious systems – who says he can grant her three wishes.

 

Indeed, if she does that, it will free him too; in his case, to return to the realm of his own kind.

 

However, there are conditions attached – one cannot, for instance, ask for immortality.

 

But Binnie is well enough versed in stories to know that the ‘grant-you-X-wishes’ trope is one of warning. Because wishes and desires have a nasty habit of having consequences – almost all initially unseen.

 

And as she refuses to make a wish, so she begins a conversation with Djinn (Idris Elba) about his own life experiences that will have a profound impact on both of them.

 

It’s not the sort of film you might expect from Mr Mad Max himself … although then again, Miller has also made the utterly charming Babe pig movies and the spikey The Witches of Eastwick, so what, precisely, would one expect?

 

The result is many, many things, with many, many threads. It touches on colonialism – including the colonialism of bodies – and on English exceptionalism. These are linked. It doesn’t shy from the embarrassment of earlier ages seeing children as sexually available through marriage – ie child abuse.

And of course, there is the nature of story and mythology. It’s never entirely clarified that Binnie’s experiences are real and not simply her own, self-declared, overactive imagination.

It is also good to see a work of art that doesn't play to the current prescriptions that everyone should have X friends and, if they don't, that's not 'Normal' or healthy. 

 

It is beautiful to watch – Miller’s evocation of an ancient, mythological Middle Eastern world is simply sumptuous. There’s also a very, very cute take on gender privilege, in Djinn’s retelling of the first encounter between Solomon and Sheba.

 

This is beautiful film; a very thoughtful film that inspires thought. A wonderfully acted one too.

 

Not quite a two-hander – but almost – Swinton and Elba are both superb in roles that one might not usually expect of either. Miller’s direction is wonderful. It’s provocative – but in a good way. Simply put, I cannot recommend this highly enough. If it’s available locally, do go and see it.