Five films to see before Three thousand years to wait for you

Ghosts, magicians, bandits, Mad Max… Some classics and curiosities to better appreciate George Miller’s new film.

Mrs. Muir’s Adventure (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)

Stop swearing, Daniel! Couldn’t you be a nicer ghost?” The young widow (Gene Tierney) gently scolds her long-dead grumpy captain (Rex Harrison), and frowns at the pranks he plays on his guests… Mankiewicz’s fourth film, Mrs. Muir’s Adventure is a masterpiece of dreamlike romanticism and tells a story not so far removed from the new George Miller: the confrontation between a rational young woman and a ghost (in this case that of an awkward old sea dog who wants to drive her away and only succeeds in seducing her). It is therefore a question of mad love, the beauty of illusions, and the grandeur of dreams in the face of sad reality. Long before Miller, Mankiewicz above all tackles head-on one of the greatest cinematographic problems, that of belief. He organizes his staging around an exchange between a living woman who wants to be told stories and a ghost who needs to be listened to, between a spectator and an old forgotten film. A good summary of Three thousand years waiting for you.

Prestige (Christopher Nolan, 2006)

Miller will have taken almost 10 years to finish Mad Max: Fury Road. But, intoxicated by the feeling of urgency, he will have been able to give birth to Three thousand years waiting for you – mounted like a guerrilla operation – in record time. Some filmmakers have always liked that: slipping a small film between two huge projects. Spielberg regularly alternates between his author branch and his chrome antics. And we remember that at the time, Nolan had chained Batman Beginsa loud and explosive blockbuster, and the Prestige, a little theoretical film that worked almost like an antidote. Behind his suspense behind the scenes of conjuring, there was a reflection on the perversity of the spectacular illusion. But Prestige was also a film of stripping, and by orchestrating the rivalry of two magicians in early 20th century London, the filmmaker seemed to be searching for his place: was he like Angier (Hugh Jackman) a flamboyant show-off (we shake the camera , we cut quickly to oil the sleight of hand) or like Borden (Christian Bale) a needy genius? And Miller? Is he like Alithea, a scientist in love with reason and logic or like his Djinn, a pure barker?

Our review of Three thousand years waiting for you

Mad Max: Beyond Thunder Dome (George Miller, 1985)

madmaxit was the energy of the apocalypse. Mad Max 2: The Challengethe fantastic ride and the pure intoxication of rhythm. madmax 3, the unloved, is the great desolation but above all a reflection on the power of the myth. Here, the desert seems infinite, the Interceptor no longer even appears on the screen and Max becomes an abstract and messianic figure (long hair, tattered toga…) who loses even his civil status (the kids call him Captain Walker). Max Rockatansky no longer exists except through the story that children will tell of him, a way of remembering, as in Three thousand years waiting for you, that basically all his cinema tends only towards that: to deconstruct the figure of the hero, to question the power of the word and to celebrate the role of fiction in our lives. Whether through the odyssey of a bitumen warrior or a bottle genius.

100 years of Australian cinema – 40,000 years of dream (George Miller, 1997)

Another Miller. After the unloved mad max 3the unknown 100 years of Australian cinema. The rhyme effect between the original title of this documentary and that of Three thousand years waiting for you can’t be a coincidence: 40,000 years of dreams / Three thousand years of longing. Each time, Miller starts from a specific point in time and space (the celebration of a hundred years of cinema, the meeting of a teacher and a genius in contemporary Istanbul) to plunge into a millennial history. , almost immemorial, and draw bridges between the myths of yesterday and today. In his 40,000 years of dreamsMiller, facing the camera, in the position of lecturer in narratology and comparative mythologies, went beyond the strict history of cinema to establish parallels between the language of music and that of the seventh art, between the tradition of storytelling among the aborigines and the reception of Max Mad in the world… As in Three thousand years waiting for youthe theoretical treatise quickly turned into a hallucinatory kaleidoscope, aiming to underline the spiritual interconnection between each human being.

Meeting with George Miller

Bandits, bandits… (Terry Gilliam, 1981)

It had to be a confined time travel film – which, by the way, could be a genre in itself (since I love you I love you at The never-ending story). But above all, it needed a film by Terry Gilliam to remind us that behind his concept, Three thousand years waiting for you is also a baroque fantasy, excessive and even crazy. Honor to the most bent of filmmakers, therefore: Gilliam. Terry is still a Python when he turns this story of dwarf thieves of a “map of time” who embark the young Kevin towards the time of Napoleon, Robin Hood or Atreides (fantastic Sean Connery in Agamemnon). Backfiring manifesto of the director, who will turn his nightmare counterpart (Brazil) three years later, bandits bandits is a kitsch phantasmagoria. Time travel has rarely been as fun and unambiguous as here: we jump into portals, we have fun in shimmering universes and we leave as we came, literally towards new adventures.

Five films to see before Three thousand years to wait for you