Dunkirk from Christopher Nolan has been one of the most highly appreciated as well as superbly made movies of the year gone by. Frankly, the film received so much appreciation that some movie addicts have started making the movie’s adaptations to pay artistic homage to it.
The latest to join this bandwagon is a YouTube channel called Like Stories of Old (LSOO). The maker of its videos has expressed a powerful urge to display the kind of impact that Dunkirk made on him. The channel’s theme is a mixture of cinematic evaluation and profound life lessons.
The fan version by LSOO is a black and white adaptation of Nolan’s movie, displaying the key aspect of iconic early twentieth century movies.
“This is a special project of mine, unlike anything I’ve ever done before,” said Tom Van Der Linden, the maker of this fan version. “What started off as a regular essay on Dunkirk’s visual storytelling and its influences from silent films, slowly turned into what is by far my most experimental video to date. It began when I re-edited a few clips from Dunkirk into a silent film style to compare it to existing silent films that Nolan mentioned as his inspirations (and also; because it was just really fun to do). I was amazed at how well it translated and how well it highlighted Nolan’s use of camera angles, body language, facial expressions and staging in Dunkirk’s storytelling; a great use of visuals both in portraying minor conflicts as well as in telling the story as a whole,” he continued.
“This last point presented an interesting challenge for my video essay,” Van der Linden continued, “because translating individual scenes into silent ones is relatively easy; I think there are many recent films that have scenes with strong visual storytelling, but I can’t think of many films that can be turned into a silent film in their entirety and still work. Dunkirk however, I believe, is one of those films. For a second I considered re-editing the entire film, but because that would obviously lead to copyright issues, I decided to transform it into a short that showcases Dunkirk’s strength in visual storytelling in both the small details as well as the story as a whole. I tried as much as possible to maintain the essence of Dunkirk, but I also wanted it to stand on its own which meant I had to pay a lot of attention to its internal logic and do some creative editing.”
A lot of people think of the Nolan movie as a brilliant depiction of the British Soldiers on the shores of the French town Dunkirk during the World War 2. The black and white rendition makes it even more visually compelling and is an experience that you can only see and believe.
