Director George Miller’s unusual new fantasy is both intimate and opulent, delicate and explosive, genteel and vulgar.
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| Alithea (Tilda Swinton), an academic and longtime creature of logic and reason, finds her core beliefs continuously challenged by probing questions from the acutely perceptive Djinn (Idris Elba) that suddenly enters her life. |
Miller and co-scripter Augusta Gore based this beguiling piece on the title tale in British novelist A. S. Byatt’s 1994 short story collection, “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye.” Byatt — the pen name of Dame Antonia Susan Duffy — also holds the conventions of folk and fairy tales as a revealing mirror of contemporary society; there’s a strong sense in her work — and in Miller’s film — that those who ignore or dismiss myth are much the poorer for having done so.
Dr. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), a narratologist who has focused her career on how fables and myths have affected human development, is introduced as she arrives — the guest of honor — for a conference in Istanbul.
Her scholarly focus notwithstanding, she’s a stoic academic and creature of logic and reason: someone who long ago abandoned any desire to pursue romantic intangibles such as true love or unbridled passion. Swinton’s performance, in these early scenes, is brusque but not unfriendly, although close colleagues find Alithea’s demeanor a bit baffling (given her field of study).
That said, she’s also prone to occasional visions of fantastical beings from some sort of long-ago realm.
It’s no accident, as she and her entourage make their way to the packed auditorium that awaits her presentation, that they pass a reference to a local production of Scheherazade.
The following day, seeking a bauble to commemorate this visit, she impulsively selects a delicate blue bottle from within an exotic gift shop. Back in her hotel room, she cleans it in the sink, snatching an electric toothbrush to scrub away the inset swirls.
And poof! The bottle top shoots out, and the room fills with a purplish-red mist laced with sparkling electromagnetic elements. They coalesce — at first massively, but ultimately at a somewhat more conventional size and shape — into a regal Djinn (Idris Elba) whose voice suggests thunder, even when calm and restrained.
Alithea has freed the Djinn from its bottle, and he graciously extends her the conventional reward: three wishes.
Oh, no, Alithea objects, still doing her best to absorb all of this. She’s far too familiar with countless sagas of trickster djinns and wishes gone horribly awry. (Readers of fantasy likely will recall W. W. Jacobs’ classic 1902 short story, “The Monkey’s Paw.”)
“I am no trickster!” the Djinn objects, in Elba’s mellifluous voice.
No matter, she counters; she wants for nothing. “I have no heart’s desire.”
Elba’s look of incredulity, at this improbable statement, is priceless.
Even as Alithea speaks these words, we disbelieve her as much as he does.
The problem, as the Djinn subsequently explains, is that his fate is entwined with specific rules. If she refuses to make three wishes, he’ll be consigned to an unpleasant, ghost-like purgatory.
By now overcome with curiosity, she suggests that he tell of his life, and the details of the three times, during the past three millennia, that he was imprisoned within a bottle.
Mention must be made, at about this point, of the fact that Alithea and the Djinn continue this unlikely meeting in her hotel room, both improbably clad only in white bathrobes: an ongoing image that’s both droll and oddly charming. Impressive visual trickery is employed, given that the Djinn’s 8-foot frame towers over her, even when they sit, side by side. (Elba is an impressive 6-foot-2, but Swinton isn’t that much shorter.)
The Djinn’s problem, he admits, is that he always has been far too fond of the company of women: a weakness that becomes a running theme in his saga. What follows, then, is a series of stories within this primary story: most of them even introduced via ornately lettered interstitial titles.
The first takes place in the latter half of the 11th century BCE, where the Djinn is consort to the sensual Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), in an luxuriously sybaritic palace setting laden with all manner of impossible beings and creatures. (Production designer Roger Ford had a field day with this film.)
The Djinn is deliriously happy here, until the heavily magicked Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad) arrives, and interferes with the dynamic.
The next tale involves the Djinn’s effort to guide a slave girl (Ece Yüksel) bound within the court of the 16th century Ottoman Empire of Suleiman the Magnificent: an equally sumptuous segment marked by battlefield combat and enough palace intrigue to satisfy Game of Thrones veterans.
Next up is an interlinking digression, “Two Brothers and a Gigantress,” which plumbs the depths of bawdy bad taste; and, finally, “The Consequence of Zefir,” set in the 1850s, wherein the Djinn finds a young woman (Burcu Gölgedar) with a deep longing to understand the nature of the universe. Alas, she is locked away like a bird, in the great mansion of a wealthy merchant.
Each saga is narrated via Elba’s hypnotic and richly persuasive voice-over: a performance that evokes fond memories of all great orators. Elba’s emotions are all over the map; the Djinn is by turns proud, regretful, regal, ashamed and — at all times — wary over what Alithea plans to do with her three wishes.
She, in turn, progressively reveals more about herself: most particularly the tragedy that prompted a failed marriage, after which she packed her former husband’s remaining possessions in a box, then stored on a shelf in the basement of her London flat. The Djinn recognizes, as do we, that she simultaneously sealed her emotions in that same closed box.
Many patrons will scoff and roll their eyes, long before reaching this point (assuming they haven’t already fled the theater). Viewed with superficial sensibilities, this all seems too contrived, too precious, too affected, too twee. To be sure, this film isn’t for all tastes.
But die-hard romantics will swoon, just as Alithea does, in the presence of the Djinn. Swinton and Elba make us believe that this is the sort of conversation that would take place in our 21st century, were somebody to uncork a Djinn from its bottle. How else could such an encounter play out?
Indeed, as we approach the third act, we wonder about that very detail: Where can this saga possibly go?
Trust Miller and Gore. The former clearly is aiming at an entirely different audience than that which flocked to his Mad Max films; the niche may be much smaller, but this film will keep such viewers utterly spellbound.
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