DIRECTOR EXCLUSIVE
Turkish Delight
An Istanbul-set fable about a djinn and a lonely academic, Three Thousand Years Of Longing sees Mad Max’s George Miller realise his passion project
Dr Alithea Binnie finds her djinn is just the tonic.
FABLES HAVE ALWAYS been part of director George Miller’s life. When he was a child in the 1950s, growing up in Queensland, he and his twin brother listened to a recorded version of Oscar Wilde’s “The Happy Prince”. “It was produced by Orson Welles. He narrated it. And it’s wonderful. My brother and I, we didn’t have DVDs or anything else – we played it a thousand times, over a year, two years.”
So perhaps it’s no surprise that the Australian filmmaker behind the Mad Max films should be so entranced by AS Byatt’s novella The Djinn In The Nightingale’s Eye. It’s the story of an academic specialising in narratology who visits Turkey for a conference, buys a trinket and – after cleaning it – releases a wish-granting djinn that’s been lurking inside this past 3,000 years. “It felt so rich and full of dramatic potential,” he says.