![]() We make the world coherent through our stories. “They’re how we as human beings, with the neurology that we’ve evolved since we’ve become homo sapient, make meaning. “Stories are a question,” Miller tells Polygon. George Miller directing Tilda Swinton and Idris Elba on the set of Three Thousand Years of Longing Photo: Elise Lockwood/Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios It is, after a fashion, a victory lap: Nearly a decade after Fury Road, Miller now has the world’s attention, and he’s cashing that check by making a film to reflect on why he does what he does. Three Thousand Years of Longing is a quiet film, a rumination on stories and storytelling presented the way the very first stories were told: with two people sitting down and talking to each other. Miller’s latest movie is nothing like Fury Road. It’s a thrilling, thoughtful action movie that was received with amazement and enthusiasm - and has since steadily grown in estimation to become regarded as an easy addition to the canon of cinematic greats. That 2015 film is now widely regarded as the very best of its decade. In this phase of his career, Miller has been lionized, his reputation solidified through the wild success of Mad Max: Fury Road. Three Thousand Years of Longing is another curveball from a man who doesn’t know how to throw any other kind of pitch. How does the man known for presenting one of the most iconic, violent wastelands in cinema also turn around and make Happy Feet, or Babe: Pig in the City? ![]() Since 1979, the idiosyncratic, soft-spoken director has surfaced roughly a dozen times, in each case to present a uniquely polarizing work. You could watch all of his movies in a weekend and find gonzo comedy, seminal action cinema, brutally intimate drama, and landmark children’s movies. The breadth of George Miller’s filmography is staggering and slim at the same time. Much like Alithea’s story, the career of the director telling that story is difficult to believe, and seemingly unreal. So to better present it to an audience inoculated against wonder, she decides to tell it as a fairy tale: one of the oldest kinds of stories, where the veracity of an account has little bearing on whether it’s true. Alithea Binnie (Tilda Swinton), the film’s protagonist, warns viewers that the story she’s about to tell beggars belief - and yet it nonetheless happened to her. George Miller’s lavish fantasy movie Three Thousand Years of Longing begins with a warning.
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