Without the interwoven stories, especially those told and lived by the scholar, what’s left becomes pure, lavish fantasy, likely the film’s goal. Miller’s direction illuminates the djinn’s tales to their maximum potential there could be no one better for the job than the director of “ Mad Max” and “The Witches of Eastwick” (and “Happy Feet” and “ Babe: Pig in the City”). Miller and co-writer Augusta Gore preserve the stories the djinn tells Alithea while more or less scrapping the rest of the text. George Miller’s new film, “Three Thousand Years of Longing,” adapts Byatt’s novella but shifts focus away from the scholar Alithea (Tilda Swinton) and onto the djinn (Idris Elba).
