There has been much speculation as to whether Three Thousand Years of Longing is based on a true story. Released in 2022, Three Thousand Years of Longing is a powerful drama starring Idris Elba as a magical Djinn, who recounts the story of his life to a famous academic. The movie quickly received a large amount of critical acclaim thanks to its moving performances, visual creativity, and poetic storytelling, all of which come together to give George Miller’s fantastical romance an entirely unique and hypnotic atmosphere.

There’s a lot of confusion surrounding to what extent Three Thousand Years of Longing is actually a real story, mostly due to the implication in the opening scene that everything to follow is based on reality. The film’s several fantasy elements quickly dispel any ideas that Three Thousands Years of Longing is entirely factual, but the film maintains the position that its story is grounded in truth, leaving many audiences unsure exactly which parts of the story actually happened.

Three Thousand Years Of Longing Is Not A True Story

An image of Tilda Swinton reading a book in Three Thousand Years of Longing

In contrast to the claim at the beginning of the movie, Miller’s drama is not based on a true story. Despite Three Thousand Years of Longing’s cast’s best attempts to sell the veracity of this tale, there’s actually very little truth behind the narrative at all - the movie is adapted from A.S. Byatt’s popular novella “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye”, which recounts five short stories filled with magic, fantasy, and deeper messages about humanity’s purpose in the universe. The collection was first published in 1994, and Miller strongly used the stories as inspiration for his own.

The stories within “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye” use traditional folklore and fairytale tropes to examine social issues of the time, with the titular story referencing the works of famous authors such as Shakespeare and Chaucer. The entire work is a celebration of literature and storytelling in general, which is a theme that Miller adopted into his cinematic adaptation, bending the way that films use linear storytelling to recount a narrative. Other stories in the collection include “The Glass Coffin” and “Gode’s Story”, which use similarly intertextual methods to comment on the very nature of storytelling.

Several Liberties Were Taken In Three Thousand Years Of Longing

Idris Elba in Three Thousand Years of Longing

Although Miller’s adaptation is loosely based on the titular story from Byatt’s collection, there are many differences between the two works. The film is much more sensationalized than the original text, focusing on the events of Djinn’s adventures and trying to make the stories as exciting as possible. It leaves out much of the meta-commentary on literature and folklore that drives the novella forward, opting to use the central romance between Elba and Swinton’s characters as the movie’s catalyst.

The ending of Three Thousand Years of Longing is also very different from “The Djinn in the Nightingale’s Eye”, as the film wraps things up in a very satisfying and cinematic fashion. It focuses on the two protagonists’ romance, forging a concrete conclusion to their relationship that isn’t really present in the original novella, which instead focuses on its own meta-commentary of contemporary society. Miller’s film is much more suitable for mainstream audiences, and his creative decision to shift the focus of Three Thousand Years of Longing to something more accessible was definitely a smart one.