The New Year Intertitle

We saw the New Year in belatedly watching George Miller’s THREE THOUSAND YEARS OF LONGING, which we didn’t go to the cinema to see because we’re bad cinephiles.

It’s very lovely. I felt there was some missing moment that would have moved us to tears, maybe Tilda Swinton is too technically adept and unsentimental to go there — her co-star Idris Elba was properly soulful, though, and both are excellent. TS discovers a new mode, which is not the crisp underplaying we see in the Fincher films nor the goofy overbite make-up grotesquerie of SNOWPIERCER. Colourful but not lurid.

The movie is a little lurid, maybe, but not offensively so. Better say “bold.” The loving attention to various differently-shaped bodies adds a positive context to Miller’s previous occasional indulgence in both Felliniesque freakshow and softcore glam. It felt celebratory rather than exploitative.

Watching pure cinema is a good way to greet the changing of the calendar, I’ll try to make it a tradition, I think. I don’t enjoy Hogmanays generally, too much pressure to have a good time. I like the flat anticlimax of January 1st a lot more. My best Hogmanays were sick in bed with a fever, laughing hysterically at Clive James’ puns on the telly, and doing vox pops for a documentary on the Edinburgh celebrations. Being ill and being at work are both good excuses for not having fun, so of course I was able to have fun.

The Miller film is certainly pure cinema — it has very few ordinary shots, shots anyone could do.

The original author, A.S. Byatt died in November, but hopefully she got to enjoy this sumptuous adaptation. I only just discovered her writing, via Alberto Manguel’s White Fire anthology. I plan to read more.