‘Dunkirk’ as a Short Silent Film Is Surprisingly Effective

“Dunkirk” is far from silent, but anyone familiar with Christopher Nolan’s odd approach to sound mixing knows that his World War II drama’s dialogue is far from clear. This being the internet, where every bit of pop culture is eventually reshaped into something else, one brave soul has re-edited “Dunkirk” as a silent film because hey, why not. Watch below.

“Everything for me in this film is about intensity and suspense, and so I wanted to address the story very much in the language of suspense,” Nolan says in the interview excerpt that opens the video. “That’s the most visual language of film there is, and so it leads you towards an approach stripped down of dialogue really looking to the visual masters of the Silent Era.” He’s said before that he originally wanted to shoot “Dunkirk” without a script.

Now in grainy black and white and featuring era-appropriate intertitles and an old-timey score, this version of the film lasts just eight minutes as it tells the story of the British soldiers who were evacuated from France during what some might call their darkest hour.