Christopher Nolan was called “crazy” for wanting to shoot Dunkirk without a Script

There was a distinct lack of dialogue in Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, however the legendary filmmaker has now revealed that he originally planned to have no script at all. Nolan told his brother Jonathan in an interview that’s been released with the Dunkirk screenplay that he was keen to shoot the film without a script and simply “just stage it”:

“I got to a point where I understood the scope and movement and the history of what I wanted the film to address, because it’s very simple geography. I said, ‘I don’t want a script. Because I just want to show it,’ it’s almost like I want to just stage it. And film it,”

He went onto add that having “mastered the form” of dialogue driven films such as Inception and Interstellar, he wanted to try a new approach. But when he proposed the idea to his wife and producing partner, Emma Thomas, she called him “crazy” and persuaded him to at least have a short script:

“Emma looked at me like I was a bit crazy and was like, okay, that’s not really gonna work,” he recalled.

Nolan ended up writing the script “very, very quickly,” resulting in one of his shorter screenplays, at just 76 pages. Dunkirk was consequently a film that mainly drew emotions from audiences by its use of visuals and intense music. Read our 5 star review below:

Dunkirk Review