People love to say of great actors, “I’d listen to him/her read the phone book.” The odd new essay film “Dreams Rewired” offers more than the phone book, but it does prove the adage correct.
The actor here is the glorious Tilda Swinton, the Oscar-winner whose range has taken her from “Snowpiercer” to “Trainwreck” to “The Grand Budapest Hotel” — and that’s just in the last couple of years.
Swinton isn’t seen in “Dreams Rewired,” but she reads aloud a torrent of words. What we see on screen is a film-clip compilation of the earliest days of cinema, from the late 19th century to the mid-1930s.
The focus is on technical innovation, so there are references to the invention of the telephone, the radio, the television. These are loosely gathered, not lined up as an informational documentary.
Instead, the narration, written by the German and Austrian filmmakers Manu Luksch, Martin Reinhart, and Thomas Tode, gives a dreamy account of what all this might mean. High-falutin’ academic rhetoric mixes with 21st-century lingo, for reasons that are not always evident.
One line — ”Every age thinks it’s the modern age” — might hold the key to this mixing and matching. It’s true; as we watch these apparently antiquated images from a century ago, we remember that every era is cutting edge at some point.
Swinton has fun inhabiting various voices and moods. She’s so good she can make even this heavy verbiage come to life.
The images are the main thing, though, and they are great to see, even if the point of it all remains obscure. The only film specifically identified, for some reason, is “Battleship Potemkin,” Sergei Eisenstein’s celebrated work of propaganda art.
Some other famous classics are identifiable: “The Man with the Movie Camera,” Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times,” the futuristic “Things to Come.” But film history is not the point here. Creating a flow of ideas is the point.
If you love the early years of movies, you might enjoy the flow — the excerpts are not only from features, but also from newsreels, scientific films, and industrial films. There’s some cool stuff unearthed here.
The filmmakers undoubtedly know what it all means. Whatever its shortcomings, “Dreams Rewired” does make the point that the smartphone you waited hours in line to buy is merely a future antique.
“Dreams Rewired” 2 1/2 stars
A curious compilation of film clips — mostly arranged around the theme of technical breakthroughs — drawn from the earliest decades of cinema. The entertaining Tilda Swinton narrates, from a high-falutin’ academic script, but it’s the images that provide the fascination.
Rating: Not rated; probably PG
Showing: Grand Illusion theater
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