Scarlett Johansson’s directorial debut Eleanor the Great appears to be a lighthearted, feel-good movie on the surface, but its actual plot is rather surprising. It follows the тιтular character (played by June Squibb) as she moves across several states to live with her daughter (Jessica Hecht) in New York following the death of her best friend (Rita Zohar).

What does Eleanor do when she reaches her new home? Oh, she lies about being a Holocaust survivor. The actual particulars of how she falls into this lie are a bit more nuanced, but nevertheless, the basic premise has stirred up plenty of conversation considering its sensitive subject matter.

With the absurdity of its plot, it’s fair to wonder whether Eleanor the Great is based on a true story. It wouldn’t be the only film releasing this fall with a wild premise that’s drawn from reality, since next month will see the release of Derek Cianfrance’s Roofman. It’s true that Eleanor the Great rose out of something true, but not quite to the extent as some might believe.

Eleanor Is Based On A Real Person, But Her Story Is Ficтιтious

Johansson directed Eleanor the Great, but Tory Kamen wrote the script, making this her debut feature. As has been revealed in interviews, Kamen found inspiration for the movie in her own life, and she built up the story from there. The Holocaust lie is fictional, but in a way, Eleanor was very real.

Speaking with Script Mag, Kamen revealed that, much like the character, her grandmother Eleanor moved from Florida to New York when she was in her 90s. The thread within the movie of Eleanor struggling to find her place in a new city at an older age was one that the real Eleanor experienced too, and Kamen confirmed that formed the basis of the script:

We would end up Skyping for hours, talking about aging and connection and feeling like a novelty. She found that people were really only interested in hearing what she had to say when she was talking about the past. What do you do when it feels like nobody cares about you, present tense, and what happens when you feel invisible? What lengths would you go to in order to change that? That was really the jumping off point. That was a years’ long conversation that I had with my grandma, and a lot of that is in the script.

However, the decision to have her lie about being a Holocaust survivor wasn’t drawn from the real Eleanor’s life at all. Instead, as Kamen explained to Collider, it stemmed from the concept of the lies people tell in order to fit in. She then wondered:

That’s what led me to a more unsettling question: what was the worst lie I could imagine coming from someone I love (in this case, my beloved and deeply unproblematic grandmother Eleanor) and would I still love them anyway?

For Johansson, Eleanor the Great was also very personal, since she’s spoken about how she too saw shades of her own grandmother in Squibb’s character. Largely, though, the movie is a fictional exploration of grief and the lengths people will go to in order to find connection.

The lie at the center of Eleanor the Great is eye-catching, but it’s mostly just a lens through which Johansson and Kamen work through very human themes and pay tribute to their grandmothers. Coming from a writer who is very close with her own grandmother, it sounds like a worthy source of inspiration, and one that might be able to soften the movie’s more controversial edges.