Adapted from the short story “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” by A. S. Byatt, Three Thousand Years of Longing is director George Miller’s newest feature starring Idris Elba and Tilda Swinton. The narrative is given to the audience in two parts. There is the frame story, surrounding the growth and desires of Swinton’s character Alithea Binnie and her relationship to Elba’s Djinn, and then there is the Djinn’s story that he is relaying to Alithea about how he came to be trapped in his bottle.

Without a doubt, the strongest parts of this film come from Djinns narrative. This is truly the heart of the film; its emotional epicenter. Dynamic shots and camera movements accompany strong writing and an equally strong peformance from Elba to give the audience something with real weight. And while the visual effects here and throughout the film are, by no means, groundbreaking, they service the film’s needs well and never distract.

The first of the Djinn’s stories tells of his desire for and attraction to the Queen of Sheba (Aamito Lagum), which ultimately end up getting him trapped in his first bottle at the hand of the magician Solomon (Nicolas Mouawad) Yes, that Solomo. After spending millennia trapped in the bottle at the bottom of the ocean, he is eventually discovered by the concubine Gulten (Ece Yüksel), who wishes to be loved by the sultan Suleiman the Magnificent’s (Lachy Hulme) son Mustafa (Matteo Bocelli). But the prince is executed by his own father and so is Gulten, who is carrying Mustafa’s child, despite warning from the Djinn. She dies before making her third wish, dooming the the Djinn to a state of limbo till his bottle is discovered again.

What is, perhaps, the strongest chapter of the entire film tells of the relationship between the Djinn and his last master Zefir (Burcu Gölgedar), the young wife of a Turkish merchant in the 19th century. The Djinn comes to her after his bottle is gifted to poor Zefir by her (much) older husband. Zefir is, by all accounts, a genius, and yet because she is a woman in an oppressive society, can never share nor reach her potential. Her first wish is for knowledge. Yet despite this knowledge, she feels the mysteries of the universe are just out of reach, and so wishes to perceive the world as the djinn do. The pair develop a relationship and the Djinn falls in love with Zefir, a love deeper even than his adoration for Sheba, and he tries to stop Zefir from making her last wish. But Zefir feels trapped by his affection for her, and perhaps from all the knowledge that she has amassed. In order to appease her, the Djinn puts himself into a glass bottle to give her space. In the midst of one of their fights, Zefir wishes to forget that she ever met Djinn right as he was entering the bottle. And so he finds himself trapped, again, until he is found by Alithea. The relationship between and the desires of the Djinn and Zefir are the most complicated and emotionally charged. Zefir’s wishes are earnest, understandable, and speak to a unique sort of longing. The relationship the Djinn has with the Zefir is, on the one hand, loving and beautiful, but on the other, stifling and not entirely healthy.

So, while the stories of the Djinn, in particular his last, are compelling, the frame around this story is found lacking. Story and character details, such Alithea’s visions of mythical figures in the first act (and the first act alone), described as her overactive imagination, are dropped and never returned to, leaving us to question their relevance at all, on both a narrative and thematic level.

 Alithea’s first wish to the Djinn is to be loved by him, and so they travel back to London together. But it soon becomes apparent that, due to the electromagnetic waves that crowd the city, the Djinn is dying, and so Alithea sets him free with another wish, claiming that the moment she wished for his love was the moment she rendered him incapable of giving that love. A generous reading would say that this is why the relationship between them feels so vapid and like there is nothing there. But it feels forced beyond that. Alithea’s feeling for the Djinn that prompted her to make the wish do feel like they grew over the course of his time with her, but rather were sparked at an instant from nowhere. On that same note, Alithea’s growth and realization that forced love is not love also comes from nowhere. We do not see her struggling in their relationship at all nor do we see her wrestling with this realization. She recognizes and happily accepts on the flip of a dime. Further, this Djinn always returns to her from time to time out of his own free will, seemingly suggesting that he feels something for her as well. But again, despite wonderful performances from two wonderful actors, nothing in the film leads me to believe in their relationship, whatever it is exactly the film wants it to be.

The second act is strong and engaging enough to stand on its own, while the first and third are weak enough to cut completely.