The Genie Code of Ethics

Three Thousand Years of Longing (2022)

Three Thousand Years of Longing, a film directed by George Miller, tells the story of Alithea (Tilda Swinton), an academic who refers to herself as a “narratologist,” a studier of stories. Alithea leads a full but solitary existence - no partners, no parents, no children. During a trip to Istanbul, she picks up a glass ornamental bottle, which turns out to house an enormous djinn (Idris Elba).

She accidentally releases him from his eternal slumber, and as djinns do, he offers to grant Alithea three wishes. Alithea’s underwhelmed by the prospect - she knows that djinns are notorious swindlers and that they never give you exactly what you want.

She isn’t eager to make her wishes, she’d rather interrogate the djinn, who proceeds to tell her tales of love and loss, experienced over many centuries of living as a genie in captivity.

As the tales unfold, Alithea, begins to contemplate her loneliness. She decides that she does in fact have a wish, and that wish is for the djinn to fall in love with her and for them to be together forever.

This movie is visually beautiful and mostly entertaining but ultimately, I don’t find it believable. Alithea spends half the movie insisting that she’s too wily to be tempted by wishes, insisting over and over again that she wants nothing. But then suddenly she flips the switch and make a wish that is widely understood to be extremely offside. A wish that interferes with another person’s free will. Am I supposed to believe that a djinn who’s been in the game for 3,000 years would break this rule? The genie in Aladdin won’t even contemplate granting that kind of wish cause it goes against the Genie Code of Ethics.

Certain wishes are just not considered ethical by genies. There are rules. You can’t kill someone, you can’t bring people back from the dead, you can’t make anyone fall in love with anyone else (and you can’t wish for infinite wishes).

Anyway, if you can get passed this egregious flaw in genie lore logic then maybe this is the movie for you. You can stream this one on Amazon Prime or borrow the DVD from you neighbourhood library. Enjoy!