Dreams Rewired

The ethereal essay provides a bounty of poetry, in the form of a measured narration by international treasure Tilda Swinton, and an extensively labored assembly of 200 black-and-white film clips.

First with the telephone, then early cinema, the magic of wireless radio and, finally, television, Dreams Rewired bombards the senses with a thorough and clever montage of found footage from the 1890s to the pre-war era.

Dreams Rewired is scattered by necessity and intent, and it throws off enough sparks to set your brain reeling.

Its feature-length assemblage of found footage, unified by an original soundtrack and eccentric narration by Tilda Swinton, will be too much of a good thing for some art-house patrons. But auds accustomed to the work of Bill Morrison and other archive-combing meditation artists should respond warmly.

Dreams Rewired is mostly content to entertain. Its explanations of how new inventions work are simplified to the point of superficiality.

Tilda Swinton narrates this oddball, meandering essay film.

The documentary isn't advancing an argument so much as simply restating a European socialistic breed of fact.